R&D personnel sees the market study and market testing stages as considerably less important than do marketing/sales personnel.
Survey findings.
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Adopting new technologies is presumed to be a logical decision; however individual users determine for themselves the costs and benefits of investing in new tech, including their own natural resistance to change. If the return on investment doesn’t support the change, not adopting new tech is the rational choice for the user.
Case study findings
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Educate each department about the purpose of each NPD stage along with each department’s role and responsibility in that stage. And special effort needs to be made to have R&D and top management understand the purpose and value of marketing-related stages in the new product development process.
Survey findings.
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The primary drivers of performance appear to be: 1. Cross-functional Involvement and good interfacing between those involved in undertaking NPD. 2. Developing a profile of defined product/market arenas to direct new product ideation and investment in R&D and marketing capabilities. 3. Provision of adequate resources for undertaking NPD. 4. Leadership and organization of projects including the use of product champions and enabling managers the flexibility to make decisions relating to NPD activities. 5. A strong market orientation that links both customer and competitor insights into the NPD process for improved decision-making. 6. A high level of senior management involvement in order to illustrate to employees that management is committed to successful NPD outcomes. 7. Undertaking up-front homework including appropriate project screening and evaluation activities, concept development and testing, and preliminary market and technical testing.
Survey. Results from questionnaire analysis.
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The quality function deployment design process is guided by 'the voice of the customer'. However, the involvement of customers themselves occurs only in the initial phase of the product design process. The customer requirements derived are transformed by a process of deductive analysis, (by the designers) into product characteristics, and eventually into process parameters. Feedback from customers in the latter stages of the development process is not explicitly supported by QFD.
Literature review.
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Value analysis measures the degree of usefulness and the appreciation of the product by customers. The aim of VA is to manufacture a product at the lowest cost, but with the highest degree of all the functions appreciated by the customer and without those functions whose utility is not perceived. Cost evaluation is the object of value engineering (VE). It considers the materials to be used and the work to be done Function by function and component by component.
Experiential. Authors' knowledge
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Avoid making the mistake of not putting the consumer at the forefront of all early development and marketing decisions. The product in this scenario had underperformed because too much focus had been put on the developer’s passion for the product at the expense of proper market research.
Experience of authors.
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Designing appropriate screening and evaluation “gates” to help prioritise projects and select winners for advancement. Preliminary up-front homework may include such activities as broad screening based on key market and technical capabilities and a broad financial assessment. At a second stage this may include refining product concepts and specifications ensuring stronger customer input and assessment, improved technical evaluation, and financial analysis.
Survey. Manager implications drawn from results of study.
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Effectively recording information from a completed new product development project will positively impact the product prototype development and product launch of a future new product development project, when there is an effective integration of marketing and research and development during the new project.
Survey. Significant interactions were found between functional integration and recording of past projects and product prototype development proficiency (F=10.69, p<.001), product launch proficiency (F=21.15, p<.001), and technological core competency fit (F=7.89, p<.01).
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Of the factors outside the company's control, the level of competition and the size of the market were reported to have the greatest impact on product success followed by an unforeseen change in the market.
Survey results from medical device manufacturers.
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Use information technology to maintain an electronic connection to customers and external partners in order to make design decisions fasters.
Survey of 214 manufacturing firms
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Use market research and concept testing to define product requirements.
Authors' research experience. More high productivity companies do this compared to low productivity companies.
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Creating high levels of cross functional integration between marketing and research and development will positively effect prototype development proficiency, R&D commercialization effectiveness, product launch proficiency, post launch product management performance, market forecast accuracy, product development cycle time, product development process performance, and overall project success.
Source: Souder, Sherman, and Davies-Cooper (1998); Kahn (1996); Sherman, Souder, and Jenssen (2000). In: Sherman, J. D., Berkowitz, D., & Souder, W. E. (2005)

Montoya-Weiss and Calantone (1994) provide an excellent summary of a number of key quantitative investigations at the project level and identify a myriad of variables impacting on successful new product development. They conclude that the four most frequently utilized factors in product-level success and failure studies are: (1) proficiency of technological activities; (2) proficiency of market related activities, (3) product advantage; and (4) protocol development.
Source: Montoya-Weiss and Calantone (1994). In: Reid, M. (2001)

Obtain technical information, both internal and external technical developments outside the organization, early on in the new product development process.
Source: Zahay et al., 2004. In: Frishammar, J. & Ylinenpaa, H. (2007)

Using market information correlates positively with new product development performance.
Source: Atuahene-Gima, 1995. In: Frishammar, J. & Ylinenpaa, H. (2007)