"A Comparison of Effective Product Development Pattern across Multi-Industries: Results of a Questionnaire Survey in 203 Product Development Organizations"(in Japanese)

This paper reports the result of a questionnaire survey conducted by the authors in 1997. About 200 responses described patterns of product development routines, organizational patterns, performance, and product-market characteristics for a recently completed project that the company recognized as "successful". The result indicated that patterns of successful product development may, at least partially, differ industry by industry, reflecting the differences in their product-market characteristics. Thus, the result of the survey indicates that there is no such thing as "one best way" for successful product development, at least at the level of actual practices and routines. This result may help practitioners learn more efficiently from successful cases in other industries, as well as differentiating patterns of product development processes and organizations for different product categories and businesses. Although further analysis is needed for understanding the underlying logic, this preliminary paper also suggests that a certain contingency approach to effective product development based on the problem-solving view of development project might explain the basic logic as to why certain development practices are emphasized in some industries than in others.