To ensure success in the current age of globalization, it is imperative for companies to understand the management practices of competitors both within and outside national boundaries. This study investigates the differences in organizational characteristics in the context of the new product development (NPD) process and the impact of these differences on NPD performance between Korea and the United States.The results show that a high degree of participation in decision making, R&D-marketing integration, top management support, project manager's skill, project manager's motivating ability, project manager's authority from top management, and product champion's influence is essential for NPD project success regardless of the country in which a company operates. This is consistent with previous studies and suggests there is a global formula for successful NPD.However, the results also show that the use of venture teams, authority concentration, organizational organicity, project manager's participative style, and existence of the product champion had a different impact on NPD performance in Korea and the US. This implies that there could be country-specific factors that influence the success of NPD, therefore research results from one country should be applied with prudence to other countries.Furthermore, it was found that differences mainly stem from country-specific contexts surrounding NPD activities. With these findings in mind, we proposed an improved research model for cross-cultural study on the impact of organizational characteristics on NPD performance. The model suggests that in addition to a direct impact, the country-specific culture has an indirect impact which is mediated by institutional management systems such as the performance appraisal system. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper compares 37 US and 49 UK high–technology companies, and looks at new product success rate, corporate learning and management style. Comparisons are made between US and UK companies and between small and large companies. The findings indicate that a relationship exists between success, leadership style and organisational learning which differs according to country and company size.

"Controlled scrimping" involves the containment of selected development costs and time-to-market by being less than thorough in non-critical areas. Resources marshalled from scrimping can be redeployed to increase the number of projects undertaken, diversify the project portfolio or increase the number of products developed. A comparative study of 60 U.S. and 60 Japanese products revealed that although overall new product success rates were not significantly lower when U.S. firms scrimped, Japanese firms that scrimped experienced significantly lower success rates. The explanation for these differences is rooted in the dissimilar U.S. and Japanese cultures that inhibit Japanese firms from engaging in successful scrimping. However, U.S. managers ave advised to use scrimping strategies cautiously as scrimping necessarily increases the risk of product failure. The challenge is to manage the tradeoffs between scrimping time-to-market product quality and the risk of product failure within a portfolio of new product R&D efforts.

Individual learning constructs were formulated in an organizational learning context and empirically tested for relationships with new product success. Two constructs, information recording-retrieving and information reviewing, were found to be positively related to new product success. The relevance of these constructs to organizational learning theory are discussed, along with the implication that managers should carefully record and review past information to improve future new product success rates.

This study identified three distinct roles of the federal technology-transfer process in the Huntsville, Alabama region: sponsors, developers, and adopters. The basic structure of transfer barriers and measures during the prospecting and developing of the federal technology-transfer process is also discussed. Sponsors attributed transfer problems to adopters' lack of awareness, while developers cited long development and payback times. Adopters admitted their lack of transfer expertise and their resistance to technologies with long paybacks. None of the role-players were measuring technology transfer very well. While sponsors agreed with adopters that long-term outcome measures were important, sponsors relied on measures of input effort and intermediate results. Developers with the most transfer experience reported the lowest use of measures. Recommendations are made for each role to help improve federal technology transfer.

This volume contains the following materials to support Volume 1: (1) Survey of Metal Fabrication Industry in Alabama; (2) Survey of Electronics Manufacturing/Assembly Industry in Alabama; (3) Apparel Modular Manufacturing Simulators; (4) Synopsis of a Stereolithography Project; (5) Transferring Modular Manufacturing Technology to an Apparel Firm; (6) Letters of Support; (7) Fact Sheets; (8) Publications; and (9) One Stop Access to NASA Technology Brochure.

Many alternative types of consortia and collaborations can exist between academe, industry and governments. This paper presents an overview of the alternative types of consortia available, a summary of their pros and cons, and a review of the findings to date on their effectiveness. The need for additional study is outlined, and an agenda for research on consortia is presented.

Technological Change: Creative Destruction.Technology, Markets, and Management.Capturing Returns from Innovation.Profiting from Innovation.Competing Under Standardization.Managing Technology in Global Markets.Managing Innovation.Venturing.Implementing New Technology.Individual and Organizational Roles at the Front End.Special Arrangements for Innovation.Using External Sources for Ideas and Research Results.What is a Good Product Concept? Tools for Developing Winning Concepts.Market Analysis and Definition.User Need Analysis.

Successful technological innovation requires contributions from both technologists and marketers. Each group contributes information to the other, making the eventual use of this extrafunctional information a concern. In this article, Rudy Moenaert and William Souder report the findings of explanatory research conducted in Belgium and present a model to describe essential elements of this process. They argue that the value of extrafunctional information is determined by channel, message, source and receiver attributes. Further, this value is thought to vary throughout the stages of the innovation process and also to depend on organizational characteristics such as formalization, centralization, climate and the type of project structure.