Under the increasingly competitive global market, a firm simply can not survive without new products developed under network cooperation, especially for high-tech industries. Even though new product development (NPD) can be carried out in customer–supplier collaboration, only some products can be developed successfully at the end. Therefore, how to increase the possibility of having more successful NPD is a critical issue for a firm. This paper, by reviewing literature and analyzing theories, first analyzes the characteristics of strategic project of NPD, including knowledge creation model, development process, product and technology maturity. Then, three-dimension elements, consisting of knowledge management methods, linkage adjustment positioning and development process differentiation, are proposed to be adopted in the NPD process in order to obtain an optimal integration effect in network cooperation. As a result, an innovative, efficient and effective NPD can be elevated and achieved. Finally, the balanced scorecard (BSC) associated with fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
To survive in a highly competitive high-tech industry, a firm should consider strategies to collaborate with or compete with suitable firms within a network in the NPD process [1]. As buyer–supplier collaboration focuses on rationalizing, coordinating, and reducing variance and repetitive processes, it may improve efficiency and effectiveness at the expense of innovation [2]. In addition, inefficient communication and slow response resulted from differences in leadership and management, IT infrastructure and organizational culture among network participants, will result in poor performance of NPD. Therefore, how to exploit existing knowledge, distribute new knowledge and then create new knowledge is critical under buyer–supplier collaboration of NPD. The purpose of this paper is to propose three-dimension elements to achieve an optimal integration effect in network cooperation. First, to develop new products efficiently and innovatively, a suitable development process differentiation needs to be adopted according to knowledge creation mode and maturity level of products. Second, to capture and distribute new knowledge, a network linking needs to be adjusted and applied according to the particular environment. Third, to encourage knowledge creation and exploit existing knowledge in the NPD process, a suitable knowledge management (KM) method needs to be analyzed and designed based on the purpose for which knowledge is being managed [3].
The performances of NPD process before and after the implementation of the three-dimension elements must be examined to show the validity of the proposed method. A balanced scorecard (BSC) associated with fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) is constructed to fulfill the task. A case is applied to first implementing the three-dimension elements, and the BSC with FAHP model is used to evaluate the performances before and after the implementation.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section two, the characteristics of developing new products in a network are introduced. A balanced scorecard (BSC) associated with fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) model is constructed in Section 3, and a real case is examined in Section 4. Some conclusion remarks and discussions are provided in the last section.
In order to exploit existing knowledge, distribute new knowledge and then create new knowledge in buyer–supplier cooperation, KM methods, including project briefing, best practice cases, data bases, and research services, are adopted for NPD A project, while informal events, experience workshops and experience reports are executed for NPD B project. In addition, the suitable linkage adjustment positioning, including being a critical external partner, is applied for NPD A project (family products), while keeping a constant balancer between internal and external interaction linkage is adopted for NPD B project (exploration products). Based on the stage of each project, KM methods, linkage adjusting and development process differentiation need to be changed accordingly.
The process and performance of NPD may be affected by inefficient communication and coordination and slow response resulted from the differences of leadership and management, IT infrastructure and organization culture among network participants. Therefore, in addition to strengthen a firm's own knowledge management activity value chain, this research proposes that the implementation of three-dimension elements, linkage adjustment positioning, knowledge management methodology and product development process management, can obtain an optimal integration effect in network cooperation. Since efficiency, effectiveness and innovation management have different and contradictory natures, it is very difficult to achieve an efficient, effective and innovative network cooperative NPD. This paper, by reviewing literature and analyzing theories, proposes first of all to analyze characteristics of strategic program of NPD including knowledge creation mode, product development procedure, product scale and technological maturity, and then bases on project characteristics to adopt appropriate KM methods, development process differentiation and linkage adjustment positioning. In this way, an innovative, efficient and effective NPD can be achieved.
The performance scores based on different aspects of BSC improved after applying the proposed three-dimension elements. Accordingly, we conclude that the structured procedure and proposed model will keep a firm operating innovatively and leading to a more satisfactory performance.
