New product development project management: Insights and research tendency from a bibliometric-based literature review

Abstract

The research in relation to new product development (NPD) project management has been very rich in the past decade. However, there has been a lack of quantitative literature reviews investigating the status and evolution of research. In this study, we aimed to fill this gap by reviewing the NPD project management literature in the SCI-E and SSCI databases from 2012 to 2021 using the bibliometric method and the CiteSpace tool. First, we provided an overview of publications and identified several leading journals. Second, based on a keyword co-occurrence network, we identified five important research themes in NPD project management: optimization and simulation, knowledge management, product innovation, performance and success factors, and development strategy and firm strategy. Furthermore, we reviewed the important literature relating to each theme. Third, we analyzed the evolution of the NPD project management literature, as well as identifying research hotpots in the last 10 years, by creating a keyword time zone network. Finally, we proposed future trends in NPD project management research to fill the existing gaps.