PERFORMANCE TYPOLOGIES OF NEW PRODUCT PROJECTS

New product success is a vital but elusive goal for many firms. The la st two decades have witnessed numerous studies into new product succes ses and failures in an attempt to uncover what makes a winner. Indeed, myriad characteristics, factors, and practices have been found that a ppear to discriminate between successful and unsuccessful new products . With few exceptions, much of this research has tended to view new pr oduct performance on a unidimensional continuum, usually financial per formance (e.g., profitability). Whereas immediate profitability is no doubt an admirable goal, there are other ways of looking at a new prod uct's performance-for example, degree of technical success, time-to-ma rket, and its overall impact on the company. The current investigation takes a broader view of new product success. A number of measures of new product performance were captured, rather than just the single mea sure continuum; this resulted in a performance map with two major and quite independent underlying dimensions of performance. A typology of performance was then developed-a classification of new product project s by how well they performed: five scenarios or clusters of projects a re identified on this map, each with its unique performance characteri stics. We then investigate in detail each project type and probe what drives the performances of these five different clusters of projects: that is, what makes for new product success of these five project type s, when success is measured in different ways. The study was undertake n in world class multinationals in the chemical industry in four count ries, but its results appear to have validity across a broad spectrum of industry.