Why New Business Development Projects Fail: Coping with the Differences of Technological versus Market Knowledge

Henri Burgers, Frans Van Den Bosch and Henk Volberda

ERIM Report Series Research in Management from Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Abstract: Managing through projects has become important for generating new knowledge to cope with technological and market discontinuities. This paper examines how the fit between the creation of technological and market knowledge and important project management characteristics, i.e. project autonomy and completion criteria, influences the success of new business development (NBD) projects. In-depth longitudinal case research on NBD-projects commercialised during the period 1993-2003 in the consumer electronics industry highlights that project management characteristics focusing only on the creation of technological knowledge contributed to the failure of those NBD-projects that required new market knowledge as well. The findings indicate that senior management support and engaging in an alliance with partners possessing complementary market knowledge can offset this misalignment of the organisation of NBD-projects.

Keywords: exploitation-exploration; knowledge; new business development; new product development; project management; sales force; strategic alliances (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 D80 D83 G14 L15 L20 L25 L63 L68 M O31 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-10-30
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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