Improving the Performance of New Product Teams

Lehigh University, and Michael Wolff for their support and comments. 1An increasingly competitive global economy, coupled with rapid technological change, has made improvements in new product development a necessity. Strategies of being "first-to-market " or a "quick second " are increasingly seen as the most effective approaches for competing with both foreign and domestic rivals (Porter, 1987). Streamlining the innovation and product development processes can allow a company to "grab a share of the new product market before it becomes congested and cut-throat " (Sasser & Wasserman, 1984; p.4). The drive to shorten the time necessary to develop new products spans a variety of industries ranging from computers to packaged goods and from automobiles to pharmaceuticals. The proposed techniques for shortening the development process are equally diverse ranging all the way from increased use of new technologies such as CAD/CAM, to changing the structure of the organization, to reorganizing the teams that are responsible for actual