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“Overlapping Problem Solving in Product Development,”
... In reality, most companies assess the performance of their innovation projects in terms of operational performance. Clearly, they work with a development schedule, budget and quality goals, that is why, for Clark and Fujimoto (1989), the performance of an innovation project is evaluated by three dimensions: cost, time and quality. The cost consists of all the human and financial resources necessary to complete the project (Kessler and Chakrabarti, 1996;Griffin and Page, 1996;Cohen et al., 2000). ...
... As part of our study, we will take into account only the dimension of design quality. Clark and Fujimoto (1989) note that these three dimensions of performance, namely, cost, time and quality, are strongly interlinked. The development time determines the cost of development and of more or less good quality products (Kessler and Chakrabarti, 1996); for this reason, the real challenge is not to focus on one of these three dimensions, but to create better products, faster and at lower costs. ...
... Table 1 shows the transition from the typology of the different kinds of knowledge exchanged through an informal way resulting from the qualitative study, to the determination of the three types of knowledge exchanges adopted as independent variables of our model. The practice of these three forms of knowledge exchange, namely, knowledge sharing, knowledge presentation and knowledge transfer, whether carried out in the context of "profitable" or "equitable" exchanges (Bouty, 2000), makes it possible to acquire knowledge likely to have a positive impact on the operational performance of an innovation project, generally measured by cost, time and quality criteria (Clark and Fujimoto, 1989). In the front-end phase of a project, the knowledge gained from these exchanges is essential because it directly influences the technical and strategic choices and reduces its overall degree of uncertainty (Cooper and Kleinschmidt, 2001). ...
This study aims to examine the relationship between the acquisition of knowledge through informal channels and performance of innovation projects. We propose that three forms of informal knowledge exchange, namely, knowledge sharing, knowledge presentation and knowledge transfer, positively impact the perceived performance of innovation projects. A survey of 360 individuals involved in innovation projects whose answers were analysed with PLSs reveals that knowledge, obtained through knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer with third parties outside the company by informal route and the simultaneous use of an innovation intermediary as part of these informal exchanges, positively impacts the three elements that have been chosen to measure the operational performance of innovation projects, namely, cost, time and quality. These results provide major contributions to the academic and managerial point of view and open up new vistas for research that derived directly from the demonstration that open innovation not only has to relay on formal agreements, but also to take into account the informal way of knowledge acquisition.
... An example of cross functional absorptive capacity is the tight linkages between design and manufacturing sub-units that has enabled Japanese manufacturing firms to move products rapidly from design through production, marketing, sales, and into the market (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). The concept shows on how overlapping product development cycles facilitated collaboration and coordination across subunits within a firm (Clark & Fujimoto, 1987). ...
... Absorptive capacity converts knowledge into products, services, and technologies , increases the distinctiveness of firm's innovations (Yli-Renko et al., 2001) and are able to develop new innovations that differ substantially from existing products, services, and processes . Overlapping interfaces between design, manufacturing, sales and marketing in Japanese firms led to increased absorptive capacity leading to movement of the product from design, sales to market (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990;Clark & Fujimoto, 1987). In sense of outward absorptive capacity, networks between firms and innovation engines, increase the ability to commercialize, as innovators can view their innovations as finished products and firms can sense business value of fundamental research. ...
With the emergence of Web 2.0, new online trends and technologies will continually emerge and play an increasingly important role in the way businesses operate. As Web 2.0 has revolutionised the internet by shifting from a published web to a user centric, user-generated web, businesses needed to understand how to change and adapt in order to benefit from these changes. This paper analyses organisations across a variety of industries, in order to determine how Web 2.0 is influencing the way companies conduct business – how they benefit, and what the advantages and disadvantages are. The authors will try to determine whether the traditional business models are changing or simply evolving through the utilisation of Web 2.0 technologies. This research contributes to the body of knowledge regarding the use of social media in commercial organisations.
... Substantial research has been done on understanding, for generic overlapping, the format and timing [9] and frequency [5] of preliminary information exchanged. Other research has focussed on effective communication and close coordination among different functional specialists [10][11][12], which allows more concurrency in executing tasks [13]. ...
... The focus of the study is on relatively long lead-time product development from [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] months, typical in the automotive sector. In considering wider industry applications of overlapping design and test, the faster paced development processes in consumer products there will be extensive overlap of activities, especially in design and test. ...
Testing is a critical activity in product development. The academic literature provides limited insight about overlapping between upstream testing and downstream design tasks, especially in considering the qualitative differences between activities that are overlapped. In general, the existing literature treats two overlapped sequential activities as similar, and suggests optimal overlapping policies, techniques, and time–cost assessment. However, this case study-based research identifies that the overlapping of upstream testing with downstream design activities has different characteristics than the overlapping of two design activities. This paper first analyzes the characteristics that affect the overlapping of upstream testing and downstream design activities, and then proposes a method to reduce the time of rework in cases where the upstream testing is overlapped with subsequent redesign phases.
... Most NPD projects try to innovate and deliver new products within specific constraints (Clark and Fujimoto, 1989). NPD project performance is high when the actual work matches planned work in terms of cost, time and quality (Nicholas, 2001). ...
... Shorter development times can lead to higher or lower development costs, and to lower-quality products (Kessler and Chakrabarti, 1996). Other researchers argue that the relevant issue is not so much predicting one dimension as predicting one while holding the other two constant (Clark and Fujimoto, 1989). However, the real challenge is to create better product, faster, and at less cost (Wind and Mahajan, 1997). ...
In today's network world, advancement in new product development (NPD) is being driven by different types of networks, joint ventures, alliances, outsourcing and mergers. Managing the integration of an NPD process in this increased organisational complexity requires a sophisticated organisation design to facilitate and support the coordination of activities and the flow of information across the networks. This paper investigates the impact of the organisational design of the ''network lead company'' (the main company in the network) on the integration of the NPD process across a network of strategic partners, and the subsequent effects on project performance. We adopt the project level of analysis and focus on NPD project organisation. Our conceptual model suggests that four organisational attributes – hierarchical levels, centralisation, formalisation and team empowerment – have an effect on the integration elements (communication and coordination), which ultimately improve project performance.
... It has been said that difficulties in the interface between manufacturing and R&D are one of the most important causes of delay in the development process. Studies have focused on the importance of an integrated type of organisation (Epton, Pearson and Payne, 1984;Imai, Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1984;Rubenstein and Ginn, 1985), educational systems for manufacturing employees (Bergen, 1982;Bergen and Miyajima, 1986), supplier involvement in the design and production process (Imai et al., 1984;Clark, 1989), and radically different approaches to problem-solving activities (Clark and Fujimoto;. ...
... Most of the studies, with exception of the automobile study by Clark and Fujimoto (1989) (1978) and Utterback and Abernathy (1975) distinguish between a product and process oriented stage in the evolution of a technology and its applications. They identify specific production processes with each of these stages. ...
The description of the contribution of manufacturing to the innovation process is often limited to the task of providing the necessary information to enable the development function to create a design which is easy to manufacture, and to be instrumental in the fast ramp-up of the production process. Though these are important tasks, it is argued in this paper that there is a third aspect of manufacturing's contribution to innovation, namely the creation of a manufacturing system which is favorable to product innovation. This goes far beyond the design of an appropriate production process, but requires the creation of a general manufacturing environment which is amenable to product innovation. This thesis is tested with data from a large survey of senior manufacturing managers.
... Here we present an example to describe the overlapping problem solving within dynamic workflow. Tasks overlapping can reduce the hidden delay in a design project and encourage the dependent information exchange in design process (Park and Cutkosky, 1999;Clark and Fujimoto, 1989). In Figure5, "TaskA→TaskB→TaskC" is the pre-defined workflow. ...
... The stages we identify map closely to stages of product development cycles (e.g. Wheelwright andClark 1992, Thomke 1998), where also the notion of iterative search has been established (Terwiesch and Shane, 2008). These are: ...
Despite the attention placed on the importance of pivoting for strategy formation in early-stage ventures, open questions remain with respect to an important dimension: how founders and venture leadership teams reason about their pivoting choices. We draw upon the conceptual lenses developed by the literature on organizational search to explore the type of reasoning models that guide these pivoting decisions. We observe two key reasoning models at play: an inductive reasoning model and a deductive reasoning model. Our findings add to the discussion on how pivoting choices emerge during strategy formation. We develop a temporal model about the occurrence of the two reasoning models during the different phases of early-stage ventures, and we qualify the models’ effectiveness under different circumstances of ambiguity and complexity, within the specific context of early-stage ventures. Our findings identify boundaries to the often advocated “build-measure-learn” approach and provide practitioners with a stage contingent guidance for their pivoting decisions.
... This overlapping of testing and design activities can create uncertainties about the consistency of the data and can block out the opportunity to respond to emerging issues. For generic overlapping, research has been done on understanding the format and timing [151] and on effective communication and close coordination among different specialists [152,153]. Tahera et al. [20] developed a method validated in a case study in the automotive sector. The objective is to avoid unnecessary rework and iteration. ...
The purpose of this research is to support decision-making for solving design issues in the development phase of complex systems supported by numerical simulation. We conducted our studies in a multinational car manufacturing company.The first part of the research was devoted to identifying the difficulties encountered in the issue resolution process, with a particular focus on decision-making issues, methods and tools. A qualitative study done with 11 experts and on 40 decision problems highlighted that the decision-makers choose from a set of process alternatives rather than artifact alternatives. The consequences of these process alternatives such as recalculating, integrating information, waiting for the technical definition of the vehicle to evolve, etc. are not explicit. We identified the lack of a rigorous framework as an opportunity for improvement.The second part was therefore to propose a framework to support design decisions. Concurrent engineering, resources constraints and project management issues have been often overlooked in the Decision Based Design literature. Attempting to bridge this gap, we designed IRDS framework. Through IRDS, we propose to make explicit the process alternatives, to gather economic data and expert forecasts in adecision model based on the prescriptive decision theory, including the maximization of the expected utility and the economic value of imperfect information.The third part of the research is related to the impact of uncertainty on the data collection process and on the overall decision outcomes. This has been done through proposing a sensitivity analysis that is performed with available data, before data gathering through elicitation process. The impacts on the decision-making process and information exchanges between stakeholders, as well as the resources consumed by the new practices we proposed have also been studied on a more superficial level. This work was in particular deployed and tested on 5 cases studies. The validation of this approach requires to collect further empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that better decisions are made on the long run. We are confident that our research will serve as a base for future studies on the design and the implementation of frameworks addressing industrial challenges.
... This overlapping of testing and design activities can create uncertainties about the consistency of the data and can block out the opportunity to respond to emerging issues. For generic overlapping, research has been done on understanding the format and timing [37] and on effective communication and close coordination among different specialists [38][39][40]. Tahera et al. [41] developed a method validated in a case study in the automotive sector. The objective is to avoid unnecessary rework and iteration. ...
The design process can be considered as series of decisions supported by modeling and simulation (M&S). Current developments aim at supporting this decision making with regard to increasing resources committed in the M&S process. To understand possible decision support, we conducted an empirical study in a car manufacturing company to map out the decision-making process during the development phase. A qualitative data analysis was performed to understand the difficulties and the needs expressed by decision makers. Industrial preliminary observations have shown that decisions regarding design issues are often postponed, causing iterations, and time and cost overruns in the development process. The study revealed that decisions are escalated to upper hierarchical levels as complexity and uncertainty increase and as the tradeoffs become impactful. A lack of knowledge about the M&S performance and limits, a lack of clarity due to design ambiguity, and uncertainty are more likely to cause iterations and delay. In addition, decision makers and stakeholders are sometimes unadvised of the influence of the decision under consideration on subsequent decisions and on the profit. These findings are interesting as they shed light in terms of decision supported needed in the future.
... Seminal research by Clark and Fujimoto (1991), later expanded by Cusumano and Nobeoka (1998), highlights how the application of lean principles can have a demonstrable positive effect on product development performance. Key tools and mechanisms, such as stagegating, frontloading, set-based concurrent engineering and cross-functional teams have been highlighted in subsequent work (Clark and Fujimoto 1988;Clark and Fujimoto 1989;Ward et al. 1995;Sobek II et al. 1999;Thomke and Fujimoto 2000). Lean Product Development is effectively the application of lean to n=1 processes -yet within the context of a mature organisation that repeats the process across product generations. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand the context of major projects and their management from an OM perspective; the authors provide a foundation for exploring how the body of work on lean production (the “old” theory) can contribute to the development of major projects (the “new” context). In doing so, it extends the prevailing economic approach to major projects (best described as “predict and provide”) and posits the development of an alternative approach based on extending the lean production logic to this new context (referred to as “predict and prevent”).
Design/methodology/approach
The paper investigates the scope for adopting lean practices in context of major project. To this effect the authors review the current state of both lean thinking and major project management, and use “Universal Credit” as an exploratory case study to illustrate and verify the arguments in practice.
Findings
Two main findings are proposed: first, the authors demonstrate the inherent performance challenge of major projects in OM terms, which the authors argue presents significant scope for the application of OM concepts to improve major project performance. Second, using lean thinking as framing, the authors identify three distinct process levels and common wastes in major projects, and identify five principles how lean could improve the delivery of major projects.
Research limitations/implications
Major projects present an untapped area for OM research; based on the exploratory case the authors propose ways how OM concepts can be applied to this new context. Further research will be needed to validate and generalise.
Practical implications
Major projects, including organisational transformations, IT-enabled change, major events and large infrastructure projects, constitute a large proportion of economic activity. Despite their prominence, however, they are also commonly associated with low success rates. This paper provides one route for exploring how a successful set of principles could be applied to improving their performance.
Originality/value
This work translates a popular set of ideas from OM to strengthening a relatively neglected context within OM. An agenda for further research is suggested to support the development of this application.
... In industry, cross-functional interfaces between research departments and product development units, including direct personal contact in cross-functional teams, have been found to be beneficial. They increase a unit's capacity to assimilate and integrate new information, they reduce product development times (Clark & Fujimoto, 1987;Cohen & Levinthal, 1990) and they increase the level of creativity of generated ideas (Alves, Marques, Saur, & Marques, 2007). One main argument for the value of multidisciplinary team composition is that it entails information diversity, which has been found to be important for team performance and team effectiveness (Jehn, Northcraft, & Neale, 1999). ...
Several reasons for the use of multidisciplinary teams composed of individuals with natural science and engineering background in problem‐solving processes exist. The most important are the integration of science‐based technologies into products and processes, and benefits for the problem‐solving process thanks to new knowledge and new perspectives on problems. In this study we analyse the implications of interdisciplinary (science – engineering) group problem solving from a managerial as well as from a cognitive perspective. We then report on an experiment investigating the impact of problem‐relevant disciplinary group composition and methodological support on the problem‐solving process and its outcome. The findings of the experiment have managerial, theoretical, and pedagogical implications related to early phases of New Product/Process Design processes in high‐technology and scientific knowledge‐related domains.
... Si l'exigence de disponibilité temporelle est connue chez l'ensemble des cadres (Bouffartigue et Bocchino, 1998), elle concerne tout particulièrement les ingénieurs qui travaillent en mode projet. En effet, en ayant réduit les cycles de développement des produits (Nonaka et Takeuchi, 1984 ;Clark et Fujimoto, 1989 ;Jones et coll., 1992 ;Midler, 1993), cette organisation du travail a accru les rythmes et intensifié le travail d'ingénierie (Goussard, 2011) et de recherche (Goussard, Tiffon, 2013). L'une des « pathologies du mode projet » serait d'ailleurs d'« acculer » les travailleurs par une pression temporelle importante (Asquin et coll., 2007). ...
This study looked at the various “masks” hiding the physical and mental difficulties of engineers’ work. It is based on qualitative research conducted in three large companies in the automobile, aeronautics, and energy sectors. In the examination of these difficulties, the study showed that the invisibility of these difficulties depended considerably on the quality of the employees’ work conditions as well as their educational and occupational socialization in a highly competitive environment. It likewise tried to determine the conditions needed to render the relations between health and work at the individual and collective levels visible. Finally, it showed how an activity that would primarily seem to engage cognitive and intellectual capacities also engaged the workers’ bodies. Their bodies bore the marks of the job’s difficulties, whether or not the constraints were physical or mental in nature, and forced the engineers to be aware of their pain when their limits were reached.
... Modular TBKW (upper right quadrant in Figure 1) is similar to standardized TBKW but involves heterogeneous knowledge composition (e.g. Clark and Fujimoto, 1989). Modularity is a notion used to describe work structures that have a high degree of independence or 'loose coupling' between functions or tasks (Sanchez and Mahoney, 1996;Schilling, 2000). ...
... PRP systems need to be able to dynamically model resources usage and dependencies and minimize the need for apriori definition. In addition, the model should link the associated statistics that define the resource's availability and anticipated usage during the activity [12]. ...
This paper presents a bottom up introduction to process modeling requirements for product realization which should drive new methods and computer tools. Though relatively high-level and organizational in scope, these models are attracting interest among design engineers, system engineers and technical managers whose decisions affect the complex downstream task interactions that cross organizational boundaries. A recent study of industrial usage, industrial requirements, and research issues is presented.
... Attentional coupling reflects the pattern of attention that emerges from the interactions that occur within channels that span organizational units (Ocasio & Joseph, 2005). These interactions create a shared dialogue and information exchange while simultaneously improving coordination (Clark & Fujimoto, 1987). Coupling may also reflect similar attention patterns in the absence of explicit communication. ...
This study examines the effects of organizational attention on technological search in the multibusiness firm. We argue that attentional specialization and coupling, or (respectively) attention given to problems within and across units, affect a unit's ability to engage in distant and local search by shaping how problems are perceived and addressed. We test this theory by applying a probabilistic topic model to all Motorola patents issued from 1974 to 1997, thus identifying and measuring attention to technical problems. Our results suggest that (a) subunits with specialized attention are not myopic but instead explore broadly and (b) tight attentional coupling across units increases the breadth of search. This study contributes to attention-based views of the firm and to studies on organizational design and search.
... Besides, vision could help to allocate resources, to condense information, to jump across the boundaries of segmented scientific disciplines, and to assess technology and radical innovations [19]. There are accumulating studies and evidence showing that vision has been positively linked to product successes [17,[20][21][22][23][24]. Hence, this study attempts to integrate a ''vision" approach to product design process for radical ideas. ...
... Besides, vision could help to allocate resources, to condense information, to jump across the boundaries of segmented scientific disciplines, and to assess technology and radical innovations [19]. There are accumulating studies and evidence showing that vision has been positively linked to product successes [17,[20][21][22][23][24]. Hence, this study attempts to integrate a ''vision" approach to product design process for radical ideas. ...
... In industry, cross-functional interfaces between research departments and product development units, including direct personal contact in cross-functional teams, are found to increase absorptive capacity (cf. Paragraph 2.2.8) and to reduce product development times [Cohen and Levinthal, 1990;Clark and Fujimoto, 1987 (cited by [Cohen and Levinthal, 1990])]. One main argument for the value of multidisciplinary team composition is that it entails information diversity, which has been found to be important for team performance and team effectiveness [Jehn et al., 1999]. ...
The present economy has been described as being essentially knowledge-based. In fact, most of the
major technological challenges of the 21st century like e.g., reduction of greenhouse gas emission
and sustainable energy supply, but also the bio- and nano-technological revolutions require
intensified collaboration between different disciplines of engineering design as well as of natural
science. Unfortunately, today, there is a lack of approaches which are appropriate to help
interdisciplinary groups tackle problems which result from an increased technology convergence.
The present Ph.D. research tries to provide some insight into the questions of
How to provide methodological support for creative problem solving in interdisciplinary
groups composed of engineers and natural scientists?
How to support the process of the integration of a technology originating from a
knowledge-intensive domain in order to solve a given design problem?
In order to answer those questions, an extensive literature review was carried out. It analyzed
relevant aspects on several systemic levels (global, institutional, team-, individual and problemperspective) covering the scientific fields of (engineering) design science, psychology and
cognitive science as well as organization science.
The literature review shed light on several aspects which are important for creative ideation in
multidisciplinary teams, like e.g. shared mental models, some kinds of dialectical reasoning as well
as the introduction and management of conflicts. Further, the review also allowed highlighting
problems related to both the activity as such as well as to the methods which seem a priori
appropriate to support it. In this regard, incoherent interpretive schemes and majority influence are
examples for the former and performance drawbacks as well as learning difficulties associated to
hierarchical methodologies are instances of the latter.
Based on the results of previous research activities, three hypotheses were developed and
subsequently tested in an experiment and an industrial case study.
Experiment:
The performed experiment inquired into the impact of disciplinary group composition (H1) as well
as of the applied methodology (H2) on the creative group problem solving process and its
outcomes.
In a laboratory experiment 60 participants, 45 with a life science background and 15 with a
mechanical engineering background were trained either in instances of intuitive approaches
(Brainstorming, Mind Mapping) or in analytical, hierarchical methodology (TRIZ/USIT). Then,
they had to solve an ill-defined medical problem in either mono- or multidisciplinary teams. The
creative process as well as the output was documented using questionnaires and documentation
sheets. Further the output was evaluated quantitatively by two domain experts before it was
categorized qualitatively.
Statistical analyses (ANOVA, Correlation parameters and Attraction rates), to a certain extent,
support H1 and H2. More importantly however, the experiment shows differences related to
method performance in general and as a function of disciplinary group composition in particular.
Industrial case study:
In the industrial case study it was investigated whether concepts of TRIZ and its derivatives
((A/U)SIT) are appropriate to provide support for the process of technology integration before the
background of an industrial NCD/NPPD process (H3).
In order to test this hypothesis, based on the findings of the previously performed experiment, a
meta-model was developed which allows the identification and resolution of problems which typically appear during the integration of a specific technology into a given application. The meta model incorporates two of the most important concepts of TRIZ, and is sought to facilitate creative problem solving attempts in both mono- and multidisciplinary teams. However, it is sufficiently open to allow pragmatic problem solving strategies or the integration of well-established methods of several domains.
The mentioned meta-model was tested during an industrial NCD study in the roller bearing
industry at which a specific customer value should be satisfied using one or several knowledge intensive technologies. After the case study, the involved engineers were asked to compare the
applied model and the associated technology integration process with existing approaches used in
the company.
The results of the experiment point toward somewhat superior performance of the presented metamodel in terms of knowledge transfer-related and idea quality-related criteria. However, required
resources for process conduction and necessary effort for the learning of the approach were
considered comparable to existing approaches. Unfortunately, the limited number of participants of
the industrial application does not all allow to draw statistically valid conclusions with regard to
H3.
The present Ph.D. work contributes to the understanding of creative problem solving in
interdisciplinary groups in general and related to technology integration in particular. Especially
the comparison of more pragmatic intuitive methods with more hierarchical analytical approaches
depending on disciplinary group composition provided relevant insight for R&D processes. The
developed meta-model for the identification and resolution of technology integration problems will
be further tested in industrial settings like pharmaceutical industry and in academic approaches like
bio-inspired design.
... Search has been a key topic in management and strategy literatures since the seminal work of March and Simon (Simon 1955;March and Simon 1958). Innovation and new product development have also been studied as a search problem (Stuart and Polodny 1996;Martin and Mitchell 1998;Katila and Ahuja 2002;Knudsen and Levinthal 2007;Terwiesch 2008;Fleming and Sorenson, 2001;Mihm et al 2003;Yassine et al 2003;Mihm et al 2010;Kornish and Ulrich 2011). ...
This study examines how the inter-firm network structure of an innovation ecosystem may condition its evolvability. An innovation ecosystem is modeled as a directed network of firms connected by transactional relationships induced from technological interdependences. A tunable random network model is created to generate networks that can represent innovation ecosystems with varied degrees of embedded hierarchy. Then Kaufman NK model is used to generate the “performance landscapes” of such ecosystem-like networks. Simulation results show that hierarchy in ecosystem networks gives rise to landscape ruggedness, indicating higher likelihood for an innovation ecosystem to be locked in local optima and the difficulty to evolve further. Vice versa, less hierarchical ecosystem networks tend to be more evolvable. Such simulation results are applied to interpret the empirical knowledge of the differences in inter-firm network structures and evolvability of the automotive and electronics ecosystems. The new understanding that correlates ecosystem structure to its evolvability also provides new strategic implications on what individual firms can do to change the architecture of their participation in the ecosystem, in order to influence the evolvability of the ecosystem where they are embedded.
... Yet this apparently sensible innovation is in fact very hard to implement because of the lack of integration-in Parsons's normative sense-between these functions. Multifunctional teams , even late in the first decade of the twenty-first century, regularly run into problems of misaligned expectations and values-based problems of 'territorial' defensiveness, cultural misunderstandings, and conflicting priorities (Clark and Fujimoto 1989;Donnellon 1993;Heckscher 2007) At a wider level, companies find it increasingly necessary to plug in to worldwide networks of knowledge development and to form relations that cross firm borders far more than before-in the form of alliances, partnerships, involvement in open-source processes, and many other mechanisms. These problems make it imperative to solve the basic Parsonian problem at a higher level: to include more different orientations, and to allow more scope for independent and voluntarist action, while still maintaining a coherence that allows the system to function rather than spiraling into a cycle of mistrust and loss of coordination. ...
Talcott Parsons was America's most influential sociologist in the 1950s and 1960s-bringing Max Weber's work to America, building a multidisciplinary social sciences approach at Harvard, and developing a highly integrated and complex theory of social action. Even before his death in 1979, however, his star had greatly dimmed; today his work is rarely read. And that, this article argues, is unfortunate, because he still has far more to say than anyone before or since on the core concepts of sociology: trust, values, commitment, and other 'normative' aspects of behavior. The article also argues, by using his model to think through the current growth of collaborative systems in business firms, that it still generates many fruitful avenues for organization theory.
... The tension between these aspirations and existing hierarchical structures and practices for managing labour helps to account for many of the initiatives associated with KM. Thus, to cite one important example, the pressures for more rapid innovation create a need for multi-functional or multi-organizational project teams, spanning organizational boundaries (Clark & Fujimoto, 1989). This in turn leads to demands for more effective ways of sharing knowledge amongst geographically and organizationally dispersed team members and of capturing the knowledge that they have generated. ...
The impact of knowledge management (KM) on the workplace still a matter of some debate, and the limited evidence currently available makes it difficult to draw any conclusive judgments'. However, one of the recurring themes of this study will be the dramatic contrast between the level of interest and expectation surrounding KM and its concrete achievements at workplace level. This study is structured around the following themes: the wider context for KM; the organizational obstacles to KM; KM's impact on management thinking; KM's impact on organizational practice; and finally, KM's implications for HRM. This study has reviewed the implications of KM on a number of levels. Setting aside the pejorative implications of management fashion, it is clear that KM has exerted an important impact on management thinking. Overall, therefore, the available evidence tends to suggest that KM's influence on management thinking has been somewhat greater than its impact on organizational practices. Many KM interventions are situated between work groups or business divisions and are aimed at overcoming the barriers to knowledge sharing posed by existing organizational boundaries. At the same time, KM's potential for change is often channeled through investments in IT systems which are de-coupled from any wider process of organizational change.
... This senior director, along with two other directors extensively involved in the NPD efforts of the firm, were asked to report the actual result achieved relative to each new product's targeted/stated objective on three separate performance metrics. This is in line with the extant literature where more objective ratings are suggested in performance measures such as sales as a percentage of forecasts (Clark and Fujimoto, 1987). In order to motivate senior managers to provide as much of the project and product performance data as possible, they were, once again, promised that the resulting publications would not be explicitly linked to their company. ...
Firms can generate rather long-lasting growth spurts through continuous innovation. Moreover, literature suggests that, when growing organically, firm performance is enhanced through a revenue expansion emphasis encompassing new-to-the-world or new-to-the-firm physical goods or service augmentations. This organic approach usually outperforms cost-reduction programs, which often yield minor improvements to existing products; or an emphasis on simultaneous revenue expansion and cost reduction. While this finding has the major implication that firms should focus and generate more radical new products for long-term success, there is need for research that investigates how firms should implement the strategy change to organic growth via innovation. The authors present a case study, which suggests that in the short run, it might be better to commence a revenue expansion strategy by focusing on incremental new product development (NPD) efforts, rather than focusing too much on new-to-the-world or new-to-the-firm products. Moreover, analyses of the rich, multimethod data, collected over a two-and-a-half-year interaction with the focal firm, illustrates that to increase success prospects of an organic innovation strategy, managers should not only engage incrementally innovative new product projects initially, but also ensure proficiency in commercializing the new product with cross-functional NPD teams. Thus, in early stages of organization transformation, the merits of the organic growth strategy will be swiftly demonstrated, the cross-functional teaming skills are learned and tested, and the new strategy becomes institutionalized. While somewhat contradictory to other studies on this topic, this more evolutionary exploration provides a new perspective for organizational change, especially when a firm is ordered to innovate. In conclusion, the insights gleaned in this study shed light on the journey from stagnating firm to a successful serial innovator via formalized NPD process implementation.
... They asserted that two-way communication between business and IT executives is essential if business and IT plans are to be coordinated. Clark and Fujimoto (1987) suggested that successful linkage depends on direct liaisons and personal links across business and IT functional units. Broadbent and Weill (1993) also drew a similar conclusion: that the link between IT personnel and business units predicted the success of a bank. ...
While researchers have encouraged more research on the causal chains between
IT investments and firm performance, the results of empirical studies have been
inconclusive. This is partly due to the exclusion of IT-business strategic alignment
(known as strategic alignment). In particular, scholars have continuously called
for research that addresses the antecedent factors that lead to the alignment.
Moreover, the elusive link between strategic alignment and firm performance
calls for further research into intermediate variables, which would in turn affect
company performance. Furthermore, although there is significant literature on
strategic alignment and its consequences, little progress has been made in
developing a comprehensive theoretical understanding of how organizations can
leverage strategic alignment types to positively influence firm performance.
Therefore, this study has succeeded in developing a causal model illustrating the
relationships between strategic alignment antecedents, strategic alignment, and
firm performance through vital intermediary variables, namely explicit and tacit
knowledge management (KM) strategies. Specifically, this study has examined the
impact of IT-business strategic alignment antecedents in terms of interaction
between business and IT managers, association between business and IT plans in
terms of IS plans-reflect-business plans (ISP-BP) and business plans-reflect-IS
plans (BP-ISP), shared knowledge between business and IT managers, and
environmental uncertainty in terms of dynamism and heterogeneity; on ITbusiness
strategic alignment in terms of managers’ exploitation and exploration
activities; and finally the impact of IT-business strategic alignment on explicit and
tacit KM strategies; and in turn on firm performance in terms of growth (i.e.
accounting-based) and innovation (i.e. market-based) performances.
Furthermore, in order to explore the above research relationships, the study
utilizes the positivism paradigm while applying mixed-method techniques that
acquired quantitative and qualitative data, in which such triangulation would help
provided more insight into the issues studied in this research. Particularly, this
study has tested the research model by conducting 152 survey questionnaires with
public shareholding firms in Jordan. It examines the model by using dynamic
panel data for the period 2000-2006 for the 152 Jordanian firms. This is by
employing the generalised method of moment (GMM) technique, which supplies a set of results that is robust to the endogeneity of all explanatory variables, and to
the presence of unobservable heterogeneity. After that, the study conducted
several follow-up interviews in Jordan to further validate the research results.
Therefore, the results obtained from the structural equation modelling (SEM)
technique, generalised method of moment system, and supplementary interviews
offer a valuable insight into the research questions.
However, even though this study is the first research of its kind to incorporate
different aspects of alignment antecedents, strategic alignment, explicit and tacit
knowledge management strategies, and firm performance into an assessment
instrument based on a model using structural equation modelling (SEM) and
dynamic panel generalised method of moment (GMM) techniques, and several
accompanying interviews to support interpreting the quantitative results, some
limitations and directions for further research are discussed. Furthermore, since
some of the research propositions were supported and some were not, and
although this study has provided a detailed roadmap which researchers and
practitioners can use to understand the resources required, realizing the potential
values of their IT investments, future research is clearly needed to reveal better
insights into the nature of these associations.
... The tension between these aspirations and existing hierarchical structures and practices for managing labour helps to account for many of the initiatives associated with KM. Thus, to cite one important example, the pressures for more rapid innovation create a need for multi-functional or multi-organizational project teams, spanning organizational boundaries (Clark & Fujimoto, 1989). This in turn leads to demands for more effective ways of sharing knowledge amongst geographically and organizationally dispersed team members and of capturing the knowledge that they have generated. ...
... Both inward and outward absorptive capacity can increase the ability to commercialize innovations. Overlapping interfaces between design, manufacturing, sales and marketing in Japanese firms led to increased absorptive capacity leading to movement of the product from design, sales to market (Clark & Fujimoto, 1987; Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). In sense of outer absorptive capacity, networks between firms and innovation engines, increase the ability to commercialize, as innovators can view their innovations as finished products and firms can sense business value of fundamental research. ...
We provide a framework comprising of propositions for further research explicating the relations between IT-based knowledge capabilities (IT-KC) and Commercialization of Innovations (CI). We posit that a firm’s absorptive capacity and ambidexterity (ability to explore and exploit) affect CI. Further, absorptive capacity too can be an antecedent to ambidexterity. IT based knowledge capability (which is an instantiation of IT capability) is found to positively moderate the relationship between ambidexterity and commercialization of innovations, and also is an antecedent to potential and realized absorptive capacity. We tie the seemingly isolated bits of literature together into an integrative theoretical model for testing.
Parmi les principaux facteurs expliquant la durée du cycle de conception, les caractéristiques des produits et des technologies semblent jouer un rôle majeur. Le processus de développement étant envisagé comme processus de réduction d’incertitude, les hypothèses suivantes sont présentées : (1) la complexité et la nouveauté des produits tendent à augmenter la durée du cycle de conception, et (2) l’expérience passée et la familiarité avec les technologies mises en oeuvre tendent à la réduire. Ces hypothèses sont vérifiées dans le cas d’un producteur français d’automates qui eut à subir d’importants retards de développement engendrés par des objectifs trop ambitieux en termes de produits et de technologies .
From: C. Heckscher and P.S. Adler, (eds.), The Firm as a Collaborative Community: Reconstructing Trust in the Knowledge Economy, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 11-106
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework of specified buyer and supplier abilities which may be apparent in processes when firms wish to develop products where other features than function are important.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected through personal interviews with managers at eight major Swedish retail chains. The framework has been developed from an analysis of the data. Three of the cases are presented to illustrate how the framework may be applied.
Findings
The framework contains the concepts specification ability and description ability, which define and specify the demand abilities of the buyer, and the concepts translation ability, interpretation ability and implementation ability, which define and specify the problem-solving abilities of the supplier.
Originality/value
The framework presented here contributes to the business relationship and network literature on product development processes by highlighting and conceptualizing the process between buying firms who have different abilities or even inabilities to specify and explain desired product qualities, and the suppliers who should interpret the demands of these buyers.
This article discusses the setting up of organization by project in a unit of R & D in the sector of energy. It shows that one of the main effects of the policy of “modernization” of R & D conducted during the past three decades is to increase time constraints in research. First, the underlying control devices in the managerial part of their work led researchers to devote more time to account for what they do, instead of to their scientific production. Then, the intensification of the work caused by the introduction of multi-projects generated extremely time-consuming “costs of coordination” and a phenomenon of dispersion hardly conducive to the concentration that their research activities require, to the point that some tasks, such as reading or writing, are carried out at odd moments, during time off and recovery time. Finally, adjusting to client and market demands give rise to a kind of research engineering, restricting researchers to projects which more and more resemble short-term and directly applicable studies.
The main purpose of this chapter is to analyze the determinants of innovation activity using Spanish data at firm level corresponding to the manufacturing sector. We focus on the relationship between the R&D effort undertaken by firms, and the innovation decision claimed by them. We are really estimating a research production function (see, for example, Crépon and Duguet, 1997), where we include other controls as firm characteristics and market conditions in addition to the typical inputs. Ester Martinez-Ros and José M, Labeaga169
Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1988.
Stockless Production (or Just-in-Time or Zero Inventory) and Fast Production (or Time-Based Competition or Competing Against Time) are important topics in the practice of operations management and in the fields of Operations Research and Management Science (OR/MS). Both topics will be reviewed here.
Having spent several years in automotive component supply, and in particular the tyre industry, the authors of this chapter have witnessed at first hand the radical changes which have hit the industry in recent years. This chapter will examine the background and historical context of the growth of manufacturing which has led to its present position. It will then seek to describe some of the relevant practices and theoretical frameworks prevalent in the 1990s; in particular, the techniques that are used within manufacturing. This will then be followed by a more detailed description of the tyre manufacturing process, its components and raw materials and their suppliers. Finally, the authors will demonstrate how different parts of the tyre making process are more adaptable to quick response manufacturing than others.
This paper describes some implications of the move to Concurrent Engineering (CE) and the requirement for IT -based tools to support this philosophy. the emphasis of the paper is user-centered design, with an organisational perspective. the paper introduces the project on which this research is largely based, then discusses the organisational requirements for the design of IT systems to support a Concurrent Engineering environment.
Resumo: Este trabalho apresenta uma abordagem da Engenharia de Sistemas para o desenvolvimento do Sistema de Emergência Elétrica (SEE) para aviões com Fly By Wire. Depois de criar o modelo do SEE e seus componentes de relacionamento, esses componentes foram analisados com base no método Total View Framework, que tem se mostrado uma ferramenta de grande importância na concepção e desenvolvimento de produtos complexos. A proposta do método, que contempla simultaneamente os aspectos do produto, dos processos do seu ciclo de vida e da organização, é justificada em função das falhas de desempenho do gerenciamento de projetos tradicionais. Nas abordagens tradicionais, a complexidade inerente ao desenvolvimento do produto não é levada em consideração. Os autores acreditam que essa abordagem permitirá promover a identificação de itens que atendam aos requisitos
relacionados com a qualidade, segurança e confiabilidade de múltiplos fatores, ainda na fase de concepção do projeto.
This volume explores the changing nature of community in modern corporations. Community within and between firms-the fabric of trust so essential to contemporary business-has long been based on loyalty. This loyalty has been largely destroyed by three decades of economic turbulence, downsizing, and restructuring. Yet community is more important than ever in an increasingly complex, knowledge-intensive economy. The thesis of this volume is that a new form of community is slowly emerging-one that is more flexible and wider in scope than the community of loyalty, and that transcends the limitations of both traditional Gemeinschaft and modern Gesellschaft. We call this form collaborative community. The trend towards collaborative community is difficult to detect amidst the ferocious forces of market and bureaucratic rationalization. But close analysis of some of America ‘s most successful corporations reveals three dimensions of the emerging form: a shared ethic of interdependent contribution: distinct from the uneasy mix of loyalty and individualism that prevailed for so long; a formalized set of norms of interdependent process management that include iterative co-design, metaphoric search, and systematic mutual understanding: distinct from both rigid authority hierarchies and informal log-rolling; An interdependent social identity that supports these organizational features: distinct from both dependent, traditionalistic identities and the independence of the autonomous self that is often associated with Western culture. This volume is a collaborative effort of leading scholars in organization studies to delineate the new form of community and the forces encouraging and constraining its growth. The contributors combine sociology and psychology theory with detailed analysis of business cases at the firm and inter-firm level.
The concept of corporate vision has been receiving considerable attention in the strategy scholarship. A clear and lofty organizational vision can provide direction to a company and can positively impact its ability to succeed. Yet research on vision at the project level has been curiously lacking. The purpose of this research is to define project vision, discuss its components and explore its impact on successful new product development. After studying the vision on a series of 13 innovations at three companies (Apple, IBM and HP), we identified several components of an effective project vision that include vision clarity, vision agreement/support and vision stability and assessed their impact on new product success. To confirm the validity and generalizability of our observations, we then tested these insights on 509 new product teams from a wide variety of firms. We found that an effective vision varies depending on the innovation type - incremental, evolutionary and radical. Our results demonstrate that vision clarity is positively associated with success in evolutionary (market or technical), and radical innovations, but not for incremental projects. Vision stability is positively associated with success in incremental and evolutionary market innovations; and vision support is positively associated with success in incremental, and evolutionary technical innovations.
The future of space mission designing will be dramatically different from the past. Formerly, performance-driven paradigms emphasized data return with cost and schedule being secondary issues. Now and in the future, costs are capped and schedules fixed-these two variables must be treated as independent in the design process. Accordingly, JPL has redesigned its design process. At the conceptual level, design times have been reduced by properly defining the required design depth, improving the linkages between tools, and managing team dynamics. In implementation-phase design, system requirements will be held in crosscutting models, linked to subsystem design tools through a central database that captures the design and supplies needed configuration management and control. Mission goals will then be captured in timelining software that drives the models, testing their capability to execute the goals. Metrics are used to measure and control both processes and to ensure that design parameters converge through the design process within schedule constraints. This methodology manages margins controlled by acceptable risk levels. Thus, teams can evolve risk tolerance (and cost) as they would any engineering parameter. This new approach allows more design freedom for a longer time, which tends to encourage revolutionary and unexpected improvements in design.
A Third Industrial Revolution is underway in manufacturing. As products become more complex, quality control becomes more difficult, and customers grow more demanding and diverse, mass production of standardized products is increasingly unsatisfactory. In responding to this challenge managers of manufacturing firms have been forced to face several critical questions and some difficult strategic choices. How must the firm change internally to compete successfully in the future? What technologies must be mastered and adopted "in house" and what can safely be contracted out? Is there an important distinction to be made between "human-centered" and "machine-centered" approaches? If so, which offers the best long term prospects? These managerial challenges have been compounded by the integration of the world economy. This paper presents some major results of a four-year study recently completed at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. The study concluded that Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) is potentially a breakthrough of the "complexity-reliability-variety" barrier.
Alliances in the field of innovation provide many opportunities for companies in research driven industries like biotechnology. As many of these alliances fail, alliance management has to be taken into consideration. Investigating drivers and conditions for successful innovation alliances can thus be helpful for profound decisions by managers, especially from small enterprises, representatives of biotechnology clusters or politicians responsible for governmental incentives. Based on a large-scale survey in German biotechnology, this article provides new insights into alliance formation and success. The results show that collaborative innovation is very common to cope with industry-specific challenges. Suppliers of information and customers are frequently selected partners and many firms belong to regional clusters. Alliance formation is related to a firm's absorptive capacity and to cultural aspects which reflect the reluctance to open up the innovation process. Alliance success is positively related to absorptive capacity and negatively related to an ineffective protection of intellectual property. Measures to improve absorptive capacity, to reduce the reluctance to collaborate and to protect intellectual property are introduced and managerial implications are derived.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide an example of how an apparently incongruent combination of organizational variables can have a positive effect on innovation through knowledge creation.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on previous theory, four original hypotheses were developed and later tested with empirical data collected from 125 research and development organizations in Japan, using analysis of variance and regression analysis.
Findings
Managerial influences and resources can significantly interact to generate a combined impact on the knowledge creation capability of organizations, which in turn is positively associated with their innovation performance. In particular, long‐term managerial influences were found to have a greater impact on knowledge creation when combined with knowledge‐exploitation resources. Synthesizing short‐term managerial influences with knowledge‐exploitation resources is not better than combining them with exploration resources. This holds true especially for organizations of small and medium size.
Research limitations/implications
This study only evaluates one case of many possibilities of seemingly antithetical combinations that can also have a beneficial impact in organizations. A larger and diverse sample, together with enhanced dimensions of managerial influences and organizational resources can make this study's implications much more universal.
Practical implications
An ingenious and purposeful synthesis of organizational variables conventionally seen as incompatible and contradictory can in reality benefit organizational goals related to knowledge creation and innovation.
Originality/value
This study puts forward a unique framework and perspective highlighting the importance of combinatory effects and the management of duality in organizations.
We extend research on team external environment by investigating whether lack of permanence, fluid membership, and environmental volatility influence the relationship between team external activities and team effectiveness. Teams engage in external activities with clients, audiences, funding sources, or other stakeholders who may receive the work of the team and/or who convey access to legitimacy and resources, and who may be outside of any organization team members represent. We seek to understand whether significant external activities reach a point of diminishing returns, arguing that the utility of such activity depends on the team external environment. Our study consisted of a quantitative analysis of 140 film-making teams rated by the teams and 5,000 film viewers. We found that the relationship between team external activities and effectiveness is nonmonotonic; a moderate amount of activity is associated with the highest level of effectiveness, but these effects are contingent upon the aforementioned environmental characteristics. Our findings extend current theory on team external environment and external activities and have practical implications for collaborators in dynamic environments hoping to optimize their effectiveness without compromising their vision.
The effectiveness of a firm's design processes is dependent upon the validity of its design theories. The designs of products, processes and procedures embody implicit or explicit theories about the nature of real world processes which shape their performance. The performance of a firm's value creating systems will meet expectations only to the extent that the theories embodied in its designs are comprehensive and valid. Design theories can be evaluated and refined through “knowledge refinement cycles”. Knowledge which is relevant to the evaluation of design theories may be resident in the expertise, experience, databases and formal models of the firm's organizational units. Systems can be designed that focus the application of this knowledge and reduce the costs of access. By refining design theories, the firm can reduce the number of latent flaws in its designs.Failure effects analysis (FEA) techniques can be applied to support the refinement of the firm's design theories. FEA techniques focus the attention of a designer on the identification of specified classes of latent contingencies in a design. The firm's ability to define specific goals for FEA and to use the results of FEA analyses as measures of design quality enhances managerial control of the design process. In addition, a system for FEA is a common language which supports the integration of organizational knowledge in the evaluation of design alternatives. The power of a system for failure effects analysis can increased through the design of intelligent systems which amplify its strengths and compensate for its weaknesses.
In recent years concurrent, overlapping development activities of engineering tasks have proved to be a cost-effective and time-efficient way to build products geared toward meeting the demands of a competitive and quality-conscious market. In this study, we examine the structure and dynamics of a software project in information technology industrial research and development that has this methodology as its foundation. We first describe a number of software engineering aspects of the project that elucidate how various development activities in its concurrently unfolding component projects are overlapped and integrated to gradually build the product over time. Using the mathematical tools of dynamic systems analysis, we next derive a number of results that characterize the long-term, stable behavior of the project. These results are then used in a numerical simulation to illustrate a procedure by which relevant resources can be distributed across the components in a way that maintains continued stability of the project over time. Our modeling approach is flexible enough to allow the theoretical results and the simulation techniques to be easily generalized to study, in real time, the stability, maintenance, and management of similar concurrent projects. The usefulness of the method lies in motivating and refining managerial decisions that drive overlapping development activities of such projects.
In this paper, we discuss the problem of reducing product development lead time by overlapping coupled development activities through the exchange of preliminary design information. We present an approach, called iterative overlapping, in which downstream development activities begin with unfinalized upstream design information and accommodate design changes in subsequent iterations. In the absence of careful control, iterative overlapping could involve excessive downstream rework leading to an increase in lead time. We formulate the iterative overlapping problem and model iterations and design changes to determine how to overlap the activities for lend time reduction. The model is illustrated with application to an automobile door panel development process.
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