What is your experience? A study on collaborating NPD professionals and the effects of their dissimilar experiences on NPD outcomes

Abstract

Prior research suggests that combining exploration and exploitation can ensure firms’ long term performance. However, balancing the two is challenging because of their fundamentally different nature. Collaboration with other companies can be a means to successfully combine exploration and exploitation. Studies on collaboration and its effects on exploration and exploitation tend to adopt an organizational point of view. In this paper, we examine the relationship at a lower aggregation level, studying collaboration between key NPD professionals, representing different firms, in the context of an inter-organizational NPD project. Key NPD professionals are those who have a large influence on th..