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An empirical investigation into methods affecting the quality of new product innovations

Eric H. Kessler (Lubin School of Business, Pace University, New York, USA)
Alok K. Chakrabarti (School of Management, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, USA)

International Journal of Quality Science

ISSN: 1359-8538

Article publication date: 1 December 1998

1900

Abstract

Seventy‐five new product development projects were studied in ten large companies to test potential strategic and process antecedents to quality. Seven factors were found to significantly increase product quality: high importance placed on quality by top management, high reward for process speed, high project stream breadth, high use of internal (versus external) sources of ideas and technology, low overlap or concurrency of the development process, low turfguarding or “silo” orientation, and high development milestone frequency. These results suggest that managers need to pay attention to both strategic orientation factors and structure‐related organizational capability factors to increase product quality. Staffing‐related factors did not seem to have a strong impact on quality; this suggests that quality is more a function of systemic versus individual factors. Additionally, it was found that there were some differences in the factors associated with high‐quality products between radical and incremental innovations. However, the study is exploratory and further research needs to test these findings as well as extend them to include other interrelationships between factors.

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Citation

Kessler, E.H. and Chakrabarti, A.K. (1998), "An empirical investigation into methods affecting the quality of new product innovations", International Journal of Quality Science, Vol. 3 No. 4, pp. 302-319. https://doi.org/10.1108/13598539810243595

Publisher

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MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 1998, MCB UP Limited

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