مرتبط ساختن استراتژی عملیات و نوآوری محصول: بررسی تجربی تولید کنندگان کاشی سرامیکی اسپانیا

This paper deals with the fit between operations strategy and product innovation. The literature review suggests that product-innovating firms should have specific, competitive priorities with regard to operations. In order to test this proposition, we carried out a survey of the competitive priorities in the Spanish ceramic tile industry. We classified respondents according to the number of new products launched between 1997 and 1999. New products were identified according to the literature-based innovation output indicator. Our results revealed that the more-innovative firms follow a different operations strategy than the less-innovative firms because of the emphasis placed on flexibility and quality capabilities.

In today’s competitive environment, product innovation is becoming more and more relevant, mainly due to three major trends: intense international competition, fragmented and demanding markets, and diverse and rapidly changing technologies. Firms that market faster and more efficiently by offering products that are adapted to the needs and wants of target customers are in a better position to create a sustainable competitive advantage (Wheelwright and Clark, 1992, Amit and Schoemaker, 1993 and Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Developing and launching of a new product involves many innovation activities (OCDE-EUROSTAT, 1997) and requires coordination between company functions such as R&D, engineering, operations, and marketing (Takeuchi and Nonaka, 1986, Montoya-Weiss and Calantone, 1994 and Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Substantial evidence exists on the important consequences that developing new products has on the production process and on operations management (e.g., Utterback and Abernathy, 1975; Hayes and Wheelwright, 1979a and Hayes and Wheelwright, 1979b). One feature of product innovating companies is the relationship between operations strategy and new product development. Operations strategy must be designed to contribute to corporate strategy (Skinner, 1969). Hence, product innovators’ operations strategies should be different from those of non-product innovators.

The main contributions of this study are: (1) the identification in the literature of those operations capabilities that are consistent with an offensive product innovation strategy, and (2) the empirical test innovation activities (INE, 1998). Our findings indicate that the more-innovative firms place greater emphasis on quality and flexibility than the less-innovative firms. There are no significant differences on the emphasis placed on delivery and cost efficiency by both the groups. Less-innovative firms emphasise on delivery as their first operations priority. Firms adopting defensive and imitative innovation strategies try to compete on their dependability in order to differentiate themselves from offensive innovators. The findings of this empirical study help to provide a more complete picture of an offensive innovator. The fit between operations capability and product innovation strategy has proved to be a distinctive feature of those firms whose competitiveness is clearly based on the development of new products. We note that our results contradict Skinner’s trade-off model, according to which an operations strategy must focus on one or two competitive priorities (Skinner, 1974). Both groups have given above average marks to cost efficiency, quality, delivery, and flexibility.