New product development (NPD) in high tech environments: a case study

Summary form only given. NPD has been one of the most studied research fields in recent years. The research efforts have been shared by academic institutes and companies. One of the main industries where NPD has become critical is the electronics industry. A main characteristic of this industry is continuously reducing product life cycles. This is both a result of a changing environment and is effecting the environment to change further. Cooper has extensively studied NPD over the years. His research findings indicate significant trends being adopted in high tech companies to be implemented into their NPD practices. One of the important trends is using the gate system to distinguish among different phases in NPD, a process discussed in the case presented in this paper. The company studied is a division of a Fortune 500 company, manufacturing computer motherboards. Many trends cited in the literature were adopted in the case company. There were also some variations from general NPD structures in the case company, such as the significantly short product life cycles created an NPD organization where NPD and maintenance teams work together on products.