Computers, cell phones and baby swings. Trail bikes, roller blades and frozen yogurt. What do these items have in common? At the very least, something so fundamental that it is usually taken for granted: somewhere between imagination and the marketplace, they all became "new products." But bringing the latest widget to market is risky business. Any number of unforeseen organizational roadblocks can lead to product failure, bankruptcy, or worse. Recent findings in the field of New Product Development (NPD) may help tip the scales in favor of success.

According to Kevin J. Dooley, Professor in Management and Industrial Engineering at Arizona State University, there are three key concepts that directly impact NPD improvement:

What is done -- a "best practice" is a tactic or method that has been shown through real-life implementation to be successful

How well the organization does what it does

How widely and often the organization performs the best practice

In research funded jointly by the NSF's Innovation and Organizational Change Program (IOC) and industry grants, Dr. Dooley and co-investigators John Anderson and William K. Durfee (University of Minnesota), and Donald R. Riley (University of Maryland) seek to determine the impact of best practices and maturity in new product development, and study how best practices diffuse within and between organizations.

Most organizations have only limited capital and personnel resources to devote to improvement efforts, and therefore must find a way to balance the three key components. Dr. Dooley's research asks the hard-driving questions: Are best practices most important? If so, which ones are most critical? Is it more important to have mature process, regardless of the practices? Is it possible to diffuse best practices in an immature process?

"As a first step, we knew we needed to develop a list of best practices that enable product and process success in new product development," Dr. Dooley explains. In order to generate the list, approximately 800 "practices" were identified through an exhaustive search of related research literature. These were honed down to 200 practices and organized into a structured model for research.

The researchers then surveyed 41 companies to find out which practices had the greatest impact on performance. Their findings reveal that the success of a product depends primarily on three things:

Selecting the right projects
Involving the customer throughout the process
Handing off the project in a smooth fashion to marketing and manufacturing.

Surprisingly, the maturity of processes did not turn out to be significant, nor did the presence of a structured process, contrary to established concepts which lie at the heart of existing NPD literature. Additional research is needed to further examine the factors impacting these NPD relationships.

Invariably, the "human" component figures significantly into the formula. The way human resources are managed heavily impacts the success of any new product, as does the all-around effectiveness of communication by and between participants.

"When companies adopt bundles of best practices simultaneously, they are essentially re-engineering their process," Dr. Dooley says. "We found that in order to succeed, companies needed frequent communication between the re-engineering team and senior management, and senior management needed to heighten awareness of the importance of change."

Not surprisingly, organizations face the same stumbling blocks as the human beings that run them. Six in-depth studies of companies undergoing change revealed that:

In estimating actual implementation time, the companies' numbers were significantly off the mark. Instead of an estimated 1-2 years, the actual processes would probably take 5 years.

While companies were very successful at identifying what was wrong in the development process, they had a very difficult time implementing changes. "We perceived this was primarily due to managerial 'risk aversion'...not wanting to change a process that works if one doesn't know if the change will really make things better, or worse," Dr. Dooley reported.

Improving the quality and timeliness of new product development is a critical strategic factor for the success of organizations. To refine and test their theories relating to NPD, Dr. Dooley's research team developed surveys which can be used by organizations to conduct their own quality/NPD self-assessment, and for strategic planning.

This NSF-funded research sheds new light on a complex process, and adds to our general knowledge of "how organizations work." In the long run, understanding and implementing positive change in the NPD process will bring not only greater organizational effectiveness, but more successful products.

Other on-going areas of study funded by NSF's Innovation and Organizational Change (IOC) include:

Secrets of Successful Fast Product Innovation (product innovation speed may be improved through the use of quality management practices, contrary to existing literature that suggest quality management and fast product innovation are mutually exclusive.)

Linking Management Practices to Bottom-Line Productivity (data collected from extensive plant visits to steel finishing lines in the U.S. and Japan conclusively shows that progressive human resource practices significantly boost employee productivity and product quality.)

Model Predicts Schedule and Quality Risks (A group of researchers at Stanford University's Center for Integrated Facility Engineering has built The Virtual Design Team (VDT), a computer model of fast paced product development projects that can simulate and predict the quality of work processes relating time-to-market, process quality and organizational resources needed to achieve them.)

IOC supports research which uses theory combined with empirical validation to expand the concepts, models and methodologies of change in organizations and institutions. Research grounded in collaboration between researchers and their subjects in industrial, educational and other organizations is preferred. IOC is jointly sponsored by three NSF directorates: SBE (Social, Behavioral and Economic Science), ENG (Engineering), and EHR (Education and Human Resources).