Analogizing and Maneuvering as New Product Development Decision Making Approaches at Technology-Based Organizations in Malaysia

The purpose of this paper is to report findings related to new product development (NPD) decision making approaches from an ongoing study on NPD management process. The research adopts grounded theory method using interview as the primary data source on sixteen senior managers from six technology-based organizations in Malaysia. Our in-depth discovery study revealed that senior managers apply two astute schemes in making NPD related decisions which signify their decision making competency; "analogizing" and "maneuvering". Analogizing is defined as an approach taken to skillfully make use of some information from one situation in an attempt to understand another situation which is ambiguous but to some degree resembling the former. "Maneuvering" is defined as an approach taken to skillfully shift or override previously decided choices or directions in response to certain influence. We propose a framework of NPD decision making approaches which facilitates theory generation in the area of NPD management. Although the insights from this study are not statistically generalizable, the concepts and proposed framework can analytically reflect similar cases, and also be used for future researches to build on and refine. More importantly, this study brings awareness to NPD management practitioners on the requisites to increase their competency in NPD decision making.