تجزیه و تحلیل مقایسه ای از توسعه محصول جدید توسط شرکت های تولیدی ایتالیایی و ژاپنی : یک مطالعه موردی

Based on survey data from Italian and Japanese companies, six measurement scales are developed for practices, process, strategic guide, and capabilities for new product development as potential determinants of its financial performance, that is, attainment of profit goals and revenue goals. By employing a regression model with a country dummy variable, the differential determinants of financial goals attainment between Italian and Japanese samples are estimated. A significant difference can be found in the impact of new product development capabilities on profit goals attainment only. Then, we evaluate the level of improvement in explanatory power by dividing the pooled sample into two and enabling regression coefficients to take different values, and find no evidences of the significant improvement. Technology and marketing capabilities concerning new product development are demonstrated to be overwhelmingly important to financial performance.

The development and introduction of innovative new products is one of the most important challenges for manufacturing companies facing uncertain and competitive business environments. An intermittent introduction of timely new products into market potentially contributes to sales growth and profitability improvement, which lead to a solid financial base for future growth of their businesses. From a perspective of competition, product and process technology is often considered as one of the most important sources of core competence, which has a potential to improve reliability and attractiveness of a company's products and reduce its manufacturing cost (e.g. Hamel and Prahalad, 1994). New product development (NPD) based on technological competence is essential for almost all manufacturing companies regardless of their size, location, product area or market they serve. This paper analyses the impact of practices, process, strategy, and capabilities of NPD comparatively between Italian and Japanese manufacturing companies on their financial goals attainment. The comparison between them is interesting for some reasons. As typical Italian companies are much smaller, and more creative or innovative than the Japanese counterparts. Based on the framework proposed by Filippini et al. (2003), Matsui et al. (2003) focused on the difference in NPD activities between two countries. On the other hand, they have similar business orientations and practices such as attitude toward human resources and close relationships with suppliers and customers. This paper intends to emphasize on the similarity of the determinants of financial NPD performance between these two countries, based on the relevant measurement scales of NPD activities. It contributes to making it clear what are common effects and what are country-specific effects of NPD activities upon financial performance.

In this paper we develop six measurement scales for practices, process, strategic guide, and capabilities for NPD as potential determinants of its performance. Special attention was paid to two financial performance indicators, attainments of profit goals and revenue goals. Employing a regression model with a country dummy variable, we estimate the differential determinants of financial NPD performance between Italian and Japanese samples. In conclusion, we can show some common effects of NPD practices, process, strategic guide and capabilities upon NPD financial performance indicators, and the overwhelming importance of capabilities concerning NPD. Although a couple of country-specific effects are also detected, we should pay more attention to the universal effects of NPD activities. Further research work is aimed to explore the determinants of other performance indicators and develop a smaller number of performance scales such as time performance, financial performance, and innovativeness performance. Another problem is to improve explanatory power of regression models for the Italian sample. Finally, we should proceed to more comprehensive models incorporating the relationships among practices, process, strategic guide and capabilities of NPD, receiving more data from different countries.