Assessing the relationship between practice changes and process improvement in new product development

This paper reports the findings of a study into the process of new product development. Specifically, it challenges the limitations of the current research into the relationship between the adoption of new tools and techniques and performance improvements in new product development. The study was carried out on a sample of manufacturing firms. Cluster analysis yields a new classification of firms, which is shown to provide a significant explanation of the relationship between levels of tool and technique usage and managers' perceptions of improvements in outcomes. The existing evaluation of tools and techniques is shown to be deficient in not considering adoption jointly rather than singly. The study shows the benefits of a high level of overall tool and technique usage for improving key competitive objectives in new product development, but with limitations. Significantly, project costs are not improved by a high use of tools and techniques. Improved assessment of tools and techniques should be employed to reduce the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of process improvement.