Configurational aspects of supplier integration in New Product development

This paper develops propositions that try to establish a link between the organizational design characteristics of the collaborative research teams and the different innovation types and their interaction effect on the outcome of the collaborative New Product Development (NPD) process. It will be argued that structural separation of the collaborative research unit and radical innovations as well as structural integration and incremental innovations will have a positive interaction effect on the NPD project outcome. Furthermore, heavyweight teams as well as autonomous teams together with market disrupting innovations and lightweight teams together with market sustaining innovations will be introduced as having a positive interaction effect on the collaborative NPD outcome. The contingency factor of the environment will be introduced as a moderator on the interaction effect. Thus, the framework introduced in the paper offers a new perspective on the phenomenon of NPD collaboration and has implications for management practice.