A Research on Iterability of Value Dimension Change in New Product Development Process

The purpose of this paper is to clarify mechanisms whereby products with value dimension differing from those of existing products are continually developed, via analysis of new product development by companies that have, repeatedly, developed products that deviate from the industry's dominant product specifications. In previous researches, although value dimension shift processes, shift endpoints, and its organizational management have been investigated, research targets were limited to a single round of value dimension shift. Therefore, this paper attempts to examine a multiple value dimension shift mechanism using the case study of three products -EX-S1, EX-F1 and EX-TR100-developed by Casio Computer Co., Ltd. in the digital camera industry. The results shows that the firm-specific product view plays an important role in product development that leads to value dimension shift. When the firm faces the competitive disadvantage in the existing value dimension, the discrepancy between the existing product development and the firm-specific product view becomes apparent. This causes the product development based on the present value dimension to reconsider and leads the product development based on new value dimension. In addition, the firm-specific product view provides product developers with criteria of product development when they attempt to create new value dimensions, and they refer to the firm-specific product view to determines the priority among the product components. In addition, this research indicates that product development organization that enables continual value dimension shift keeps mobility of organizational members low and continuous commitment of leaders and followers to the product development last for a long time. This organizational management makes it possible to share the firm-specific product view throughout product development organization, and two product development projects, value dimension improvement-type products and value dimension change-type products, can coexist within one product development organization.