Title: Inter-firm modularity and the implications for product development
Description: Both the importance of the product development process and its complexity have been widely acknowledged by academic scholars and managers. The need to coordinate multiple functional areas within the firm, multiple external constituents, and meet tight deadlines while under competitieve pressure makes the efficient and effective management of the process complex and difficult. In this paper, we explore a context in which firms face yet another level of complexity in the product development process: inter-firm modularity where different firms produce the components of a system in a decentralized fashion.