Project and product management in collaborative product innovation

Abstract

Organising for superior product development results remains a key challenge in today's competitive environment that places a strong premium on innovation. While the benefits of collaboration in or outsourcing of product development have been widely recognised, many models for organising product development are based on a single firm perspective or do not take well specifics of product development into account. Based on five cases of collaborative product innovation between OEMs and suppliers, this paper explores different models for organising for superior product performance depending on project and product characteristics: For well-contained components, the supplier should take clear responsibility for the project and product with the customer in a monitoring role and ensuring integration. For components requiring extensive application and technical domain knowledge, shared responsibility during the concept phase is preferable to allow balanced integration of different product aspects, while the responsibility should shift to the supplier in later project phases without the customer completely withdrawing from joint project work. In any model, role-related management capabilities of both customer and supplier are important drivers for success.