bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Product Development Strategy and Organizational Learning: A Tale of Two PC Makers
Authors: Methé David T. , Toyama Ryoko , Miyabe Junichiro 
Published: October 2003

The personal computer (PC) marketplace in the US presents a dizzying array of component suppliers and products. No single firm dominates the industry with a complete package of hardware and software components. Although one company's operating systems and general‐purpose applications are installed on most PCs in the US, the other system components—processors, memory, storage devices, display adapters, monitors, specialized applications, and so on—come from any number of sources.David T. Methe, Ryoko Toyama, and Junichiro Miyabe point out that the PC industry in Japan also exhibits this decentralized nature. However, they also note that despite the decentralized network structure of the Japanese PC industry, one company—NEC—was able to achieve a dominant market share. To provide insight into the key issues involved in the management of complex technology, they contrast NEC's strategic approach to product development and organizational learning with the approaches taken by Fujitsu—the firm that placed a distant second in this market.Despite matching NEC in terms of technological capabilities, financial resources, and managerial talent, Fujitsu never managed to threaten NEC's dominance of the PC market in Japan. Fujitsu continually emphasized technological leadership, even at the expense of protecting its installed base. Poor coordination of resources and product development efforts resulted in incompatibilities among Fujitsu's various products, and the company failed to foster close relationships with suppliers of such key technologies as software and peripherals.NEC's PCs did not enjoy the advantages of first‐to‐market status or technological leadership. Instead, NEC achieved market dominance by finding the combination of product technologies that met the needs of the greatest number of consumers. Throughout almost 20 years of competition in the PC industry, NEC successfully maintained consistency and backward compatibility across its product lines. NEC also recognized the importance of third‐party software developers, and carefully cultivated relations with these firms as a source of competitive advantage. In other words, NEC struck the right balance between three key factors: technological innovation, motivation of third‐party developers of software and peripherals, and service to its installed base of customers.
When Product Development Performance Makes a Difference: A Statistical Analysis in the Electronics Industry
Authors: Terwiesch Christian , Loch Christoph , Niederkofler* Martin 
Published: October 2003

Throughout the pages of JPIM and other publications, researchers and practitioners devote considerable effort to identifying the dimensions of new‐product development (NPD) performance that relate most closely to business success. Although we may hope to unveil a set of universal truths about the relationship between NPD performance and business success, the relevant NPD performance measures appear to depend on the industry in which a firm competes.In fact, Christian Terwiesch, Christoph Loch, and Martin Niederkofler suggest that the overall relevance of NPD performance to business success depends on the firm's competitive market environment. In a study of 86 business units operating in 12 different electronics industries worldwide, they develop a market contingency framework for understanding the impact of NPD performance on a firm's profitability. Their study uses data from the “Excellence in Electronics” project, a joint research effort by Stanford University, the University of Augsburg, and McKinsey & Co.They describe market context in terms of three dimensions: market share, market growth, and external stability—that is, the average product life cycle duration in the market. Looking at all 86 business units in the study, they find that industry membership accounts for 23% of the variance in profits, with 18 percent of the variance determined by industry profitability and 5% by the three dimensions of market context. For the firms in the study, development performance has the most significant effect in slow‐growth markets and in markets with long product life cycles. In these stable industries, low development intensity, product line freshness, and technical product performance increase profitability.The results indicate that NPD performance plays a much more important role for explaining the profitability of dominant firms than that of the low‐market‐share firms in the study. NPD performance explains 30% of the profitability variance among the high‐market‐share business units in the study, but none of the variance for the low‐market‐share business units. Although the profitability of the smaller firms in the study is driven primarily by the industry environment, these firms can compete on the basis of superior technical performance.
Cross‐National Diffusion Research: What Do We Know and How Certain Are We?
Authors: Kumar V. , Ganesh Jaishankar , Echambadi Raj 
Published: October 2003

To compete effectively in the global marketplace, marketing managers require insight into how a product gets adopted in different countries. For example, can international marketers identify specific cultural traits that may help them to forecast how quickly a new product will be adopted in a particular country or in a group of somehow related countries? Similarly, can they identify factors that suggest why the adoption process differs am.ong countries?Although these diffusion‐related questions address critical issues for international marketing managers, only a few studies have explored cross‐national diffusion. To help fill this gap, V. Kumar, Jaishankar Ganesh, and Raj Echambadi present the results of a study that replicates and extends the findings of three previously published studies of cross‐national diffusion. Their research aims to replicate four findings from the previous studies: the role of country‐specific effects in explaining differences in diffusion parameters, the presence of a lead‐lag effect, the use of cultural variables to explain systematically the diffusion patterns across countries, and the merit of country segmentation schemes based on diffusion parameters. They extend the previous research by integrating cross‐sectional and time lag variables into a single framework, and they demonstrate how managers can apply this integrated framework for forecasting the diffusion of new products.They replicate the findings from the previous studies by using annual sales data for five product categories (VCRs, microwave ovens, cellular phones, home computers, and CD players) in the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. The product categories and time periods covered differ from the ones in the previous studies; some overlap exists among the countries in this study and the ones in the previous studies.The findings in this study suggest that country‐specific characteristics (for example, cosmopolitanism, mobility, percentage of women in the labor force) are useful for identifying the differences in diffusion patterns across countries and innovations. This study also suggests that the lead‐lag effect helps to explain differences in diffusion across countries. Factors that this study identifies as possibly influencing the clustering of countries with similar diffusion patterns include timing of entry, geographical proximity, and cultural or economic similarity.
The Impact of Cross‐Functional Joint Involvement Across Product Development Stages: An Exploratory Study
Authors: Song X. Michael , Thieme R. Jeffrey , Xie Jinhong 
Published: October 2003

Cross‐functional integration offers numerous, well‐documented benefits for new‐product development (NPD), but it also can carry significant costs. Joint involvement of R&D, manufacturing, and marketing personnel can increase the quality, the manufacturability, and the marketability of the final product. However, building consensus among these groups, with their differing perspectives and goals, may require time‐consuming meetings as well as tremendous finesse from the managers who guide the NPD effort. Those managers require an approach to cross‐functional integration that strikes a balance between efficiency and effectiveness.X. Michael Song, R. Jeffrey Thieme, and Jinhong Xie propose that the right mix of cross‐functional involvement may differ depending on the stage in the NPD process. They also suggest that blindly promoting the involvement of all functional areas in all stages of the NPD process may actually decrease NPD performance. They test these propositions in a study that examines the relationships between new product performance and cross‐functional joint involvement between R&D, manufacturing, and marketing in five major stages of the NPD process: market opportunity analysis, planning, development, pretesting, and launch. Their objective in this study is to identify patterns of effective cross‐functional involvement in different NPD stages. The study uses data collected from 236 managers working in the R&D, manufacturing, and marketing departments of 16 Fortune 500 firms.Their findings suggest that new‐product success may be more likely when a firm employs function‐specific and stage‐specific patterns of cross‐functional integration than it is when the firm attempts to integrate all functions during all NPD stages. For example, during the market opportunity analysis stage, the findings suggest that joint involvement between R&D and marketing may be productive, but joint involvement between R&D and manufacturing and among all three functions may be counterproductive.The results also indicate that joint involvement among all three functions either does not have a significant effect on new product success or may be counterproductive in all stages of the NPD process. For the firms in this study, the three functions seem to take turns playing the central role in cross‐functional activities. During the product planning, development, and testing phases, the role of the focal function, or communication hub, shifts from manufacturing to R&D and then to marketing. (c) 1998 Elsevier Science Inc.
Verbal versus Realistic Pictorial Representations in Conjoint Analysis with Design Attributes
Authors: Vriens Marco , Loosschilder Gerard H. , Rosbergen Edward , Wittink Dick R. 
Published: October 2003

The current generation of high‐powered graphics software offers an effective means for presenting product designs. Armed with the right tools for generating photorealistic representations of alternative designs, product development teams can obtain useful consumer input about product design attributes. However, generating computer‐based models carries greater costs than producing verbal representations (written, key‐word descriptions).1 If a verbal representation can effectively communicate the relevant design and styling attributes, can product developers justify the costs associated with generating a computer‐based model?Marco Vriens, Gerard H. Loosschilder, Edward Rosbergen, and Dick R. Wittink highlight a fundamental question in the choice between verbal and pictorial representations2: Does the type of representation used affect the nature and the quality of the results that product developers obtain? Specifically, does the type of representation used in a study affect the information that the study provides about market segmentation and the relative importance of different design attributes? And does the choice of representation type affect a study's reliability and predictive accuracy?To address these questions, the authors conducted a study with a European subsidiary of a Japanese manufacturer of car stereo equipment. The study involves the selection of product designs from those made available by the manufacturer. Respondents were asked to evaluate both verbal representations and photorealistic pictorial representations of proposed car stereo designs. Half the respondents evaluated the verbal representations first, while the other half rated the pictorial representations first.In this study, the pictorial representations produced higher relative importance ratings for two of the three design attributes, as well as somewhat greater heterogeneity (that is, segmentation) among respondents. However, the verbal representations produced greater predictive accuracy, especially for respondents who rated the verbal descriptions after they had evaluated the pictorial representations. These results suggest that the pictorial representations improved the respondents' understanding of the design attributes, while the verbal representations seem to facilitate judgment.
Black Box Engineering: Redefining the Role of Product Specifications
Authors: Karlsson Christer , Nellore Rajesh , Soderquist Klas 
Published: October 2003

Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in numerous industries recognize the benefits of involving their suppliers in the product design process. Specifications play a central role in guiding that supplier‐OEM relationship. For so‐called “black‐box” parts, the OEM specifies overall requirements for product function and performance, cost targets, and development lead time, and then communicates this information to suppliers, who perform detailed engineering and testing. Black‐box engineering marks a fundamental change in the buyer‐supplier relationship, and companies that use or plan to adopt this practice must understand the factors that contribute to its successful implementation.Using survey responses from more than 300 suppliers to a European automobile OEM, Christer Karlsson, Rajesh Nellore, and Klas Soderquist identify the problems those suppliers face in the specification process. To provide insight into the context and the causes of those problems, they also describe the results of case studies conducted in the OEM and two suppliers. In this way, they attempt to identify critical factors that can help to improve the specifications process both internally at an OEM and between the OEM and its suppliers.The respondents identified numerous problems that they face in the specifications process. Based on feedback from product development managers and design staff members in the case study companies, those problems are categorized as follows: technical content and the level of detail in requirements, changes of specifications, cost, interpretation and understanding, and supplier participation in the specification process.Black‐box engineering redefines the role of specifications. Instead of a fixed document that dictates to the supplier, the specification becomes an open medium for communicating functional and performance requirements and necessary technical adjustments. In other words, black‐box products require a highly interactive design process. Product development managers for suppliers and OEMs must understand that they cannot avoid changes in specifications during black‐box engineering projects. Rather than view such changes as wastes of time and effort, they should approach the black‐box engineering process as a learning opportunity. By working with several parallel sets of functional solutions, which they can validate with the customer before developing detailed dimensional definitions, suppliers can limit the amount of time they lose as a result of changes in specifications.
Technical Professionals in Cross‐functional Teams: Their Quality of Work Life
Authors: Cordero Rene , Farris George F. , DiTomaso Nancy 
Published: October 2003

The idea that R&D professionals typically spend a considerable amount of their time working as members of teams makes sense. After all, plenty of research indicates that the use of cross‐functional teams improves the effectiveness of product development efforts. However, the increasing use of cross‐functional teams raises an important question for researchers and R&D practitioners: Does the use of cross‐functional teams improve the quality of work life for technical professionals?Rene Cordero, George F. Farris, and Nancy DiTomaso address this question in study of 1,714 R&D professionals working on projects. They suggest that being a member of a cross‐functional team may be more demanding than working as a member of a functional project group. On the other hand, they expect that working on a cross‐functional project team may be more rewarding than working in a functional project group. Their study tests these hypotheses by examining the relationships between measures of the extent to which respondents work on cross‐functional teams and five measures each of the participants' job demands and positive job outcomes.The study identifies positive relationships between working on cross‐functional teams and the five positive job outcomes studied: job growth, job security, membership in successful teams, earning money, and job satisfaction. The study finds less consistent and weaker relationships between working on cross‐functional teams and the five job demands studied. Specifically, the study identifies positive relationships between working on cross‐functional teams and the following job demands: effort, job involvement, and considering a lot of difference of opinion. The results of this study do not find a conclusive relationship between cross‐functional team membership and time pressure. And contrary to expectations, the study finds a negative relationship between working on cross‐functional teams and job stress.Comparing the responses of participants who work on project teams with those who do not, the results of the study indicate that respondents who work on project teams face greater job demands than positive job outcomes. However, working on cross‐functional teams seems to increase positive job outcomes more than job demands. In other words, working on cross‐functional teams appears to increase the quality of work life for the technical professionals in this study.
Using Conjoint Analysis to Help Design Product Platforms
Authors: Moore William L. , Louviere Jordan J. , Verma Rohit 
Published: October 2003

This article illustrates how one can combine different conjoint analysis studies, each containing a core of common attributes, to help design product platforms that serve as the foundation for multiple derivative products. The illustration is based on actual, but disguised, data from a small company that makes electronic test equipment.This article demonstrates that decisions that consider products individually are likely to be suboptimal and can be significantly different than those based on product platforms. Suboptimality can occur either when preferences for product features differ across markets or when a technology is more important to the overall company than it is to an individual product. Additionally, we show the importance of considering both fixed and variable costs when performing this type of analysis as sales, contribution, and profit‐maximizing products are quite different. Finally, sensitivity analyses show that these results are robust with respect to assumptions about price sensitivity, fixed costs, and timing of entry. © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.
Multifamily Distress: A Case for National Action*
Authors: Stegman Michael A. 
Published: October 2003

Among other reasons, controlling financial distress in the conventional multifamily sector is important because of the neighborhood destabilizing effects of partially occupied and vacant buildings and the potential lending cutbacks that could be made by financial intermediaries whose loan portfolios may contain substantial numbers of older, failing rental properties.This article develops the case for a heightened national concern for the importance of this inventory to the housing welfare of the nation, particularly lower income and minorities; and then by analyzing the known levels of distress in the FHA insured unsubsidized stock. Failure rates in this portion of the multifamily sector are sufficiently great to suggest that similar problems already plague the conventional market and that such distress should be of major policy interest. The final section propose the development of a multifamily research and demonstration program as a basis for national action.
A Principal Component Logistic Analysis of the Mobility Decision in Transitional Neighborhoods
Authors: Boehm Thomas P. , Mark Jonathan 
Published: October 2003

This study represents an extension of the literature that examines the factors affecting a household's decision to make an intrametropoli‐tan move by emphasizing the importance of neighborhood characteristics in addition to the traditional life‐cycle variables on the decision to move. Because of the dichotomous nature of the dependent variable and the collinearity among the independent variables, we employ both principal component and logit analysis. The primary data base is drawn from a sample of households moving into and out of two areas in St. Louis.The results indicate that many of the traditional life‐cycle variables are significant, although some behave differently than in the usual case because of the transitional nature of the neighborhoods we examine. The results also suggest that a household's perceptions regarding the quality of the neighborhood are also important determinants of mobility. Finally, when the maximum likelihood logit analysis results are compared with the principal component logit results, we find that the principal component logit technique performs better in almost all instances.
Borrower Attitudes Toward Alternative Mortgage Instruments*
Authors: Colton Kent W. , Lessard Donald R. , Solomon Arthur P. 
Published: October 2003

Much of the existing literature on homeownership assumes that financial markets work well enough to allow households to translate permanent income into effective demand. However, transaction costs, imperfections, and uncertainties all constrain the markets' operation so that people are often forced to choose a quantity of housing stock that diverges from their desired consumption level. Instead of being able to borrow against future income for the down payment or to make monthly payments in a pattern that matches future income, young families in their early years may be constrained from purchasing the size house they desire, and older households may remain in homes larger than they need. In light of these market imperfections, housing and tenure decisions depend not only on permanent income and the relative price of housing services, but also on such mortgage parameters as monthly payment patterns, down payment, and rate of equity accumulation.Models of the demand for housing and homeownership described in the existing literature do not include these parameters of mortgage finance. Mortgage terms are important factors in housing consumption and investment decisions. Because the standard mortgage no longer seems appropriate for all households under all economic conditions, the extent to which alternative mortgage instruments meet the requirements and preferences of different segments of the market becomes an important issue.
A Research Note on Factors Associated with Troubled Residential Construction Loans
Authors: Lusht Kenneth M. , Leidenberger Bruce E. 
Published: October 2003

Several factors considered significant in determining the level of construction lending risk were tested for association with samples of troubled and good residential construction loans. Generally, a priori expectations were confirmed. The strongest associations with risk were found for unavailability of materials, followed by inflationary cost overruns and borrower experience.Interest rates on the sample of troubled loans did not significantly differ from the rates on the sample of good loans, suggesting the lender did not adequately recognize elements of lending risk, or that those risks were ignored.