Customizing practices based on the frequency of problems in new product development process

Abstract

The study of new product development best practices aimed at helping new product development process managers improve the process has been the subject of many publications in recent years. These practices have been analyzed, categorized, and disseminated based on numerous research methods, such as benchmarking, success factors analysis, surveys of practices used by successful companies, practitioner panels, and practice frameworks. However, the adoption of such practices depends on many factors, such as product characteristics, market, cultural aspects, and the ecosystem of the country or region where a company operates. This research proposes an alternative to identify and recommend new product development process practices with a greater potential to solve the most common difficulties encountered in new product development process. This approach can be used to complement the previously mentioned ones. The inspiration for this work came from the observation of business process improvement methodologies such as Lean Thinking and Six Sigma, in which the first step is to identify and analyze problems prior to defining actions to eliminate them. To achieve this goal, a survey involving 346 companies operating in Brazil was conducted to identify common new product development process practices and problems. Multivariate contingency tables with Chi-square significance tests and odds ratio were applied to analyze the data. The hypothesis tested was that the absence of a new product development process practice heightens the risk of the new product development process problem. This suggests that the successful application of a practice eliminates or prevents the corresponding problem. The result of this research is an alternative way to propose practices that can potentially eliminate specific new product development process problems.