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This paper aims to explore how customer involvement unfolds in the development of a smart product. Smart product development poses new challenges to firms. In particular, the buyers’ and users’ involvement has shown novel dynamics in smart product development. These peculiarities are linked with the specific characteristics of the digital technology embedded into the smart products. This study’s rationale is to analyse the frictions arising from potential divergent objectives between the focal firm and its customers when digital technologies are embedded in traditional products.

This study adopted an explorative and qualitative approach to investigate new emerging dynamics of customer involvement during technological development. A coffee machine producer is selected as a case study to uncover new insights and a novel perspective on the phenomenon of customer involvement in smart product development. Data analysis followed an abductive approach that allowed to identify the dimensions of friction emerging during the technological development process.

The case study analysis depicts that smart product development presents novel customer involvement dynamics. In particular, this study abductively identifies dimensions of friction emerging between the focal firm and buyers/users. Friction arises in the technological interface between the actors involved. These dimensions of friction address the complexities of developing technology in terms of smart products with customer involvement. This study suggests that embedding of technology into an existing product might change how customers are involved.

Even though customer involvement in product innovation has been extensively studied in management literature, this paper focused on a new type of innovation, smart products. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have yet empirically explored customers’ involvement while embedding digital technologies into existing products to create smart products. In particular, this study sheds light on the dimensions of friction emerging between the focal firm and the actors of the business network. This study unfolds novel contributions to the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing literature on technological development.

This current study seeks to examine the effect of pharmaceutical business ecosystem (BE) governance mechanisms on new product development and to ascertain how crucial firm coordination will be in these relationships.

Analysis was based on 173 firms (institutions) selected from pharmaceutical BE. Various validity and reliability checks were conducted before the presentation of the actual analysis, which was conducted using structural equation modeling in Amos (v.23).

Findings showed that both relational and contractual governance mechanisms had direct positive effects on new product development of keystone. These effects were, however, partially mediated by coordination among the pharmaceutical BE members.

The development of COVID-19 vaccines across the globe has taught us that innovation and speedy development of pharmaceutical drugs are very essential. New product development success could however be achieved through effective coordination and proper governance mechanisms.

Business ecosystem, considered a network of actors, with varying degrees of multilateral, nongeneric complementarities and nonhierarchically controlled relationship, tends to pose problems for keystones. Very limited attention has however been paid to the governance mechanisms and coordination within the BE, especially in the pharmaceutical industry, which has proved its worth in this season of COVID-19.

The paper investigates the effects of strategic human resource practices on intellectual capital and new product development performance in knowledge-based firms.

A quantitative approach was adopted to conduct the present study. The respondents were sampled from knowledge-based firms in Iran. Overall, 120 managers in 60 knowledge-based firms were selected using convenience sampling. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to ascertain the validity and reliability of the observed items, and a structural equation model was employed for testing the proposed hypotheses.

In the studied firms, strategic human resource practices have a positive and significant effect on intellectual capital. Moreover, the findings of this study indicate that those firms that use their intellectual capital have a higher new product development performance.

The study focuses on knowledge-based firms in Iran, which limits the generalizability of the research results. Therefore, future studies should be carried out with samples from other settings and countries. Moreover, as the study was cross-sectional, the causal relationships could not be inferred directly.

With regard to key areas of improvement identified in this study, knowledge-based firms should focus on increasing new product development performance by improving employees' training, involving them in their job-related decision-making process, empowering employees to innovate, developing intellectual capital and monitoring the customer's satisfaction level of new products.

The study extends the intellectual capital literature by linking strategic human resource practices to new product development performance in knowledge-based firms via intellectual capital as a mediator.

Despite the important role that exploitation plays in innovation and new product development (NPD), research on the relative impact of internal organisational stocks of existing knowledge on subsequent exploitation is largely absent. In particular, there is lack of clarity within the extant literature regarding the associations between organisational exploitation and, respectively, the distal-proximal technological experience and radical-incremental innovative experience generated by multiproduct firms. Thus, this study seeks to further enhance researchers’ theoretical understanding on the relationship between organisational exploitation and internal knowledge stocks categorised along two dimensions of organisational experience accumulated by multiproduct firms that have not previously been considered jointly.

This paper pursues a focussed literature review approach and applies the underlying theory of exploitation to develop a theory explaining the possible relationships between organisational exploitation and internal knowledge stocks.

Based on the theory of exploitation, this paper proposes a new direction in studying the various internal knowledge stocks and their respective impact on subsequent organisational exploitation.

The proposed research direction suggests an emerging framework of possible relationships between exploitative new radical products development in firms, and respectively, proximal and distal technological experience, and radical and incremental innovative experience, accumulated in multiproduct firms. This novel framework can guide further research on this topic.

To fill a research gap regarding the possible relationships between subsequent exploitative endeavours and two dimensions of organisational experience that have been traditionally associated with the exploration-exploitation construct, this paper proposes and develops a novel typology of knowledge stocks categorised along two dimensions of organisational experience accumulated by multiproduct firms that have not previously been considered jointly in the literature.

As the start of a new product development (NPD) process, the front fuzzy end (FFE) is believed to determine new product performance to a large extent. However, its effects on new product performance, particularly in terms of quality and cost, lack empirical evidence in the extant literature. Moreover, the joint performance effects of the FFE and cross-functional interfaces in later NPD stages (i.e. product development and product launch) are largely overlooked and deserve further investigation. Therefore, this study aims to explore the direct effects of the FFE and later stages’ joint moderating effects on new product performance (i.e. quality and cost) from a holistic process view.

A conceptual model is proposed to hypothesize the FFE–new product performance relationships and the joint performance effects of cross-functional interface management. A sample of 196 firms from an international survey is used and hierarchical linear regression is employed to test the proposed hypotheses.

This study finds that FFE implementation contributes to both new product quality and cost performance. Moreover, interface management in multiple NPD stages has synergistic performance effects. Specifically, the FFE, customer involvement in product development and manufacturing flexibility in product launch jointly improve new product quality performance, while the FFE, supplier involvement in product development and manufacturing flexibility in product launch jointly improve new product cost performance.

This study extends the NPD literature by deepening the understanding of the key roles of the FFE on new product performance and evidencing the synergistic effects of cross-functional interfaces in multiple NPD stages. Further, this study also highlights the differential joint moderating effects of interface management in later NPD stages on new product quality and cost performance. This study also offers insightful implications to NPD managers.

This paper aims to review the extant literature on open innovation and new product development (NPD) using bibliometric analysis to gauge the evolving journey of this concept in the domain of Business and Management.

The researcher used the Scopus database to search the relevant documents for bibliometric analysis. The data range was from 2006 till June 2023. Citation analysis, co-citation analysis and co-occurrence of authors' keywords were used for bibliometric analysis.

The paper charts the intellectual structure of literature related to open innovation and NPD. The five major themes emerge as prominent themes in the literature, i.e. Open Innovation: Conceptualization, Dynamic Capabilities and Competitive Advantages; Open Innovation: Contingencies and Possibilities; Co-creation and New Product Development (NPD); Open Innovation for Businesses: A Shifting Paradigm; and Implementing of Open Innovation in Industries: Cases. Besides this, the study also reveals the most influential authors, journals and countries in their contribution to open innovation and new product development. Future research directions are also presented.

The present study contributes on academic and managerial fronts. The study provides important insights contributing to the open innovation and NPD literature. From the organizational point of view, the study provides a detailed understanding of the concept of open innovation and NPD that can aid managers in acquiring a comprehensive knowledge of the concept before using it as a strategic intervention.

The present study identifies the gradual progression of this research area over time. It delineates key themes emerging from past literature, providing avenues for future research.

Existing studies have paid less attention to the impact of knowledge accumulation on digital transformation and its boundary conditions. Hence, this study aims to investigate the effects of ambidextrous knowledge accumulation on manufacturing digital transformation under the moderation of dynamic capability.

This study divides knowledge accumulation into exploratory and exploitative knowledge accumulation and divides dynamic capability into alliance management capability and new product development capability. To clarify the relationship among ambidextrous knowledge accumulation, dynamic capability and manufacturing digital transformation, the authors collect data from 421 Chinese listed manufacturing enterprises from 2016 to 2020 and perform analysis by multiple hierarchical regression method, heterogeneity test and robustness analysis.

The empirical results show that both exploratory and exploitative knowledge accumulation can significantly promote manufacturing digital transformation. Keeping ambidextrous knowledge accumulation in parallel is more conducive than keeping single-dimensional knowledge accumulation. Besides, dynamic capability positively moderates the relationship between ambidextrous knowledge accumulation and manufacturing digital transformation. Moreover, the heterogeneity test shows that the impact of ambidextrous knowledge accumulation and dynamic capabilities on manufacturing digital transformation varies widely across different industry segments or different regions.

First, this paper shifts attention to the role of ambidextrous knowledge accumulation in manufacturing digital transformation and expands the connotation and extension of knowledge accumulation. Second, this study reveals that dynamic capability is a vital driver of digital transformation, which corroborates the previous findings of dynamic capability as an important driver and contributes to enriching the knowledge management literature. Third, this paper provides a comprehensive micro measurement of ambidextrous knowledge accumulation and digital transformation based on the development characteristics of the digital economy era, which provides a theoretical basis for subsequent research.

In socio-technical transition theory, resistance by existing technology and regime resistance plays a key role. The resistance is in the form of intentional improvements; eventually, the regime destabilizes and adopts the new technology, referred to as the sailing-ship effect. Researchers used a structural view and examined it as a strategic action and its relationship with new technology (competitive/symbiotic) in non-fast-changing sailing systems. This study uses a microlevel view and examines it in a fast-changing where products/services are developed by integrating existing technology with new product innovations; their success depends on addressing technical/market uncertainty. This study examines the sailing-ship effect in a fast-changing system and contributes to the socio-technical transition theory.

The authors need to examine the phenomena of the sailing-ship effect in its setting, and a case-study method is appropriate. The selected case provided diverse analytic and heuristic perspectives to examine the phenomena; therefore, it was a single case study.

In an IT scenario, the strategic actions decide and realize agility and competitive advantage by formulating appropriate goals with required budgets and coevolutionary changes to resources at product, process and organizational levels, addressing technical/market uncertainty. Moreover, the agility displayed by strategic actions determines the relationship with new technology, which is interspersed. Finally, it provided insights into struggle, navigation and negotiations, forming strategic actions to display the sailing-ship effect.

The study selected a Banking Financial Services and Insurance product of an IT Services company. As start-ups exhibit inherent (emergent) agility, the authors can examine agility as a combination of emergent and strategic actions by selecting a start-up.

The study highlights the strategic actions specific to an IT services company. It developed its product and services by steering clear from IT innovations such as native cloud and continuous deployment. It improved its products/services with necessary organizational changes and achieved the desired agility and competitive advantage. Therefore, organizations devise appropriate strategic actions to combat the sailing-ship effect apart from setting goals and selecting IT innovations.

The study expands the socio-technical transition theory by selecting a fast-changing system. It provided insights into the relationship between existing and new technology and the strategic actions necessary to manage technical and market uncertainty and achieve the desired competitive advantage, or the sailing-ship effect.

The purpose of this study/paper is conducting a Systematic mapping review, as a systematic literature review method for reviewing the literature of new product development by textmining and mapping the results of this review.

This research has been conducted with the aim of systematically reviewing the literature on the field of design and development of products based on textual data. This research wants to know, how text data and text mining methods, can use for the design and development of new products.

This review finds out what are the most popular algorithms in this field? What are the most popular areas in using these approaches? What types of data are used in this area? What software is used in this regard? And what are the research gaps in this area?

The contribution of this review is creating a macro and comprehensive map for research in this field of study from various aspects and identifying the pros and cons of this field of study by systematic mapping review.

This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.

This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.

Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.