PRINCIPLES OF NEW PRODUCT MANAGEMENT - EXPLORING THE BELIEFS OF PRODUCT PRACTITIONERS

Conventional wisdom might lead us to conclude that the various discipl ines involved in product development and management are often at cross -purposes. For example, practitioners from R&D and engineering have be en known to suggest that marketing fails to understand the technical t rade-offs involved in product management decisions. Conversely, market ing professionals sometimes complain that their technology-oriented co lleagues pursue product development initiatives without adequate marke t awareness. And practitioners from both sides of this debate have ass erted that research on new product development tends to be of the ivor y tower variety, with little or no relevance for industry. Are such co mplaints valid? Perhaps it is time for a reality check. By searching a cademic literature on product development, Roger J. Calantone, C. Anth ony Di Benedetto, and Ted Haggblom have compiled a list of 40 fundamen tal principles of new product development. This list forms the basis f or a survey of new product practitioners from marketing and technical disciplines. The study provides a means for assessing whether practiti oners agree with the fundamental principles of new product development that are identified in current academic literature. By obtaining resp onses from both marketing and technical professionals, the survey also sheds light on whether those two groups hold fundamentally different beliefs regarding new product development. The survey results reveal s trong overall agreement among practitioners regarding these fundamenta l principles of new product management. Managers believe that 80% of t he principles are either usually or almost always true. In other words , the survey results support the idea that the academic community is p ursuing research issues that are relevant to practitioners, and that t hey are reaching valid conclusions. There are only a few cases in whic h the responses from the technical and marketing practitioners differ. Those disagreements probably result from differences in the basic ori entations of the two groups. For example, it is not surprising that ma rketing managers would be more likely to agree that ''product users an d the marketplace form the most important source for new product ideas ,'' while technical managers more strongly support the idea that ''rad ically new technologies constitute an important source of new product ideas.'' The respondents noted overall disagreement with only a few of the 40 principles. In many of these cases, the academic literature ha s reached mixed conclusions. In other words, these ''principles'' migh t actually be oversimplifications, and further research is probably ne eded before we can fully understand the issues involved.