The Effects of Integrative Strategies Along the Supply Chain on NPD Success

Abstract

This study analyses the effects of different integrative strategies related to supply chain (SC) actors (suppliers, customers and internal manufacturing) in the early stages of new product development (NPD) on NPD success. Relying on various theories and related empirical evidence, we state three hypotheses and empirically test them using multi-country and multi-industry data from 309 manufacturing plants. The results show that different strategies of involvement explain different NPD success. We observed that integrative practices involving three distant actors have a positive impact on all NPD success indicators. We also observed that NPD success related to specific purposes, for example, market or internal processes, can be obtained with simpler combinations of collaboration. This shows the significance of choosing a differentiated portfolio of SC partners based on cognitive distance to achieve success in different NPD performance measures. Our results confirm that the types of partners are determinants in achieving different NPD success and that there are different alternatives to achieve success. These results have implications for managers to optimise the allocation of limited resources when cooperating with different agents in NPD projects.