An Experiential Approach for Evaluating Product Development Capabilities

Summary form only given. New product development is frequently the most challenging and costly activity undertaken by firms. This paper presents the results from a case study of a process developed to assist one high technology firm assess its capabilities to innovate. This company had suffered several innovation problems, such as, delivering new products behind schedule and over the targeted development budget. The consequences of these performance problems directly impacted customer satisfaction levels as well as created a decline in product profitability. The Innovation Capabilities Assessment process used entailed in-depth field interviews with key development participants; the use of a custom designed innovation assessment instrument; feedback of the study's findings to key development managers, team members and senior managers; and specific recommendations for company-wide development improvement. We suggest that other technology companies can use our Innovation Capability Assessment methodology. Several directions for future research regarding innovation capability assessment methods are proposed