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The essential investments in new product development (NPD) made by industrial companies entail effective management of NPD activities. In this context, performance measurement is one of the means that can be employed in the pursuit of effectiveness.

This paper examines three issues. First, do multiple possible paths to high versus low new product performance (NPP) occur among European, high-tech, industrial manufacturing firms? Second, what are the upstream influences on high NPP? For example, what background factors affect the levels of the KSFs? Third, do consistent country-level differences occur among Austrian, German, and Swedish executives in their evaluations of antecedents and high-tech NPP? To probe these issues, a total of 771 chief operating officers and project managers participated in face-to-face long interviews (McCracken, 1988) covering 241 less and 264 more successful than average industrial NPD projects. The empirical findings support the propositions that: (1) multiple paths lead to high versus low NPP; (2) unique antecedent variables affect the KSFs for high NPP; and (3) for several upstream and direct influences, consistent national differences occur among executives’ assessments of NPP. A key implication of the study for NPD executives is to recognize the possibility of alternative paths leading to successful NPD.

The paper provides an overview of research published in the innovation and operations management (IOM) literature on 15 methods for cost management in new product development, and it provides a comparison to an earlier review of the management accounting (MA) literature (Wouters & Morales, 2014).

This structured literature search covers papers published in 23 journals in IOM in the period 1990–2014.

The search yielded a sample of 208 unique papers with 275 results (one paper could refer to multiple cost management methods). The top 3 methods are modular design, component commonality, and product platforms, with 115 results (42%) together. In the MA literature, these three methods accounted for 29%, but target costing was the most researched cost management method by far (26%). Simulation is the most frequently used research method in the IOM literature, whereas this was averagely used in the MA literature; qualitative studies were the most frequently used research method in the MA literature, whereas this was averagely used in the IOM literature. We found a lot of papers presenting practical approaches or decision models as a further development of a particular cost management method, which is a clear difference from the MA literature.

This review focused on the same cost management methods, and future research could also consider other cost management methods which are likely to be more important in the IOM literature compared to the MA literature. Future research could also investigate innovative cost management practices in more detail through longitudinal case studies.

This review of research on methods for cost management published outside the MA literature provides an overview for MA researchers. It highlights key differences between both literatures in their research of the same cost management methods.

Traditionally, firms have been dependent on internal sources such as their own employees – and up to a certain extent, on some external sources, their customers – for innovation. However, in the current scenario of technological dynamism, firms are exploring multiple sources to generate ideas for innovation. Therefore, there is a need to understand the relative effect of various sources of innovations on a firm’s performance.

We offer a conceptual framework where we identify six distinct sources of innovations – firm, customers, external network, competition, macro-environment, and technology and how they create value for focal firms especially their brand equity. We introduce a taxonomy of various costs and benefits related to innovations. We then argue using our proposed taxonomy to understand the relative strengths of various sources of innovation affecting a firm’s brand equity.

We discuss and compare the relative effects of these sources of innovations on a firm’s brand equity by rank-ordering the sources. The customers and the technology as a source of innovation have the maximum impact on the firm’s brand equity followed by the marginal impact of macro-environment and external network of a firm. The firm itself has a moderate impact on its brand equity, while competition has the minimal impact. Further, we also discuss how the relationship is moderated by different innovation characteristics (nature and type of innovations).

The main practical implication is to create awareness among managers about various costs and benefits of the proposed six sources of innovations and their effects on brand equity. Managers would be able to prioritize their sources of innovation based on firms’ current needs, and whether to focus on lower costs or building higher brand equity in the scarce resource environment.

We offer a comprehensive list of six sources of innovation, build a conceptual framework wherein we discuss the relative strengths of these sources affecting brand equity.

Recognizing the impact of innovation on organizational performance, scholars from a number of disciplines have sought to identify the conditions that make innovation possible. Although these studies have served to identify a number of key variables, the relationship between these variables and innovation is complex. In this chapter, we argue that the apparent complexity of these relationships may be attributed to cross-level differences in the requirements for innovation and the existence of complex interactions among the phenomena operating at a given level of analysis. The implications of this multi-level perspective for understanding how innovation occurs in organizational settings are discussed.

Beyond the widely acknowledged importance of new business, the role of young exporting high-tech business in Israel and many other small economies is seen as vital for economic growth. Israel is small and geographically isolated from the main markets, suffers from security difficulties, but fosters a culture, which promotes knowledge rich new technologies. Thus, new ventures with leading edge technologies and prospects of high growth and profitability offer a means to achieve the national goal of economical independence. Internationally however, the high-technology sector has recently suffered badly from the bursting of the dot.com bubble and the crash of the Nasdaq.

This article brings a new, broad conceptual framework to the quest for understanding dynamic capability in organizations (i.e., “managing on the edge of chaos”). This approach rests on two major ideas: (i) a duality–paradox perspective and (ii) new typologies of organizational learning (OL) and individual action/thinking. A case of radical innovation at Microsoft provides a multilevel stimulus. Understanding it requires a focus on two dualistic challenges. For use in future ODC research and practical assessment, this broad new conceptual framework includes: (i) collaboration as a central concept; (ii) duality–paradox as a key source of conflicts that can threaten collaboration; (iii) five types of OL, (iv) four types of individual action/thinking, including paradoxical thinking, and (v) the proposition that “golden dualities” can be created from once-troubling duality situations (where critical collaboration was in danger) which have been transformed from the metaphorical “odd (contentious) couple” into a “productive (collaborative) partnership.”

Although research on channel integration has evolved into a major stream in literature in international marketing, channel integration in new product export remains unexamined. Drawing on transaction cost analysis, organizational capability, and marketing control perspectives, the authors develop a conceptual model of channel integration in new product export. They further test the model using data collected from the computer software industry. The findings indicate that both channel integration and new product competitive advantage exert positive impacts on product market performance in foreign markets. The results regarding asset specificity, country risk, and firm size offer interesting insights about the linkage between these antecedents and channel integration.