Breaking the Time Barrier in NPD: From concept to innovation with less than £5K.

A Methodological Approach to Efficient Technology Driven Innovation in SMEs

Leon Williams • Saeed Al-Zarban • Filipa Costa •Oluwatobi Olajide • Hordur Sveinsson • Han Xu

25 April 2013

Abstract In the fiercely competitive world of today, adopting solely the high quality/ low price/ differentiation business strategies for innovation is no longer sufficient to guarantee firm success. In order to stay ahead and prevent not being pushed out of the

market, Continuous innovation is now accepted to be important in any organisation; but with turbulent battles from larger enterprises in industry, SMEs find that they are usually constrained with time money and people. A survey of 20 technology-driven SMEs showed that funds allocated for NPD projects are very small. Many of the SMEs were predominantly around the £5,000 to £15.000 bracket of allocation for NPD projects and about 12% of them even admitted to allocating £5000 or less for NPD as they could not afford more than that. In another survey conducted by Owens (2007), 42% of SME’ stated how limited financial resources feeds directly into delayed NPD processes; hence portraying that SMEs have to battle with NPD delivery on time. With limited finances, SMEs also have a much smaller pool of human resources available to them than their larger counterparts. Overcoming the constraints of only 3 months, £5,000 and 5 full time team members on an NPD project, this paper provides a proven strategy for continuous innovation success despite these challenges using the case study of the new product development of a health monitoring device.

Keywords Small to Medium Enterprises, New Product Development, Innovation, Time, Money, People

Abbreviations

NPD New Product DevelopmentSME Small to Medium Enterprise(s)TDI Technology Driven InnovationTRL Technology Readiness Level(s)UDI User Driven Innovation

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L. Williams ()Centre for Competitive Creative Design School of Applied SciencesCranfield University, Cranfield., MK43 0ALe-mail: l.williams@cranfield.ac.uk

Saeed Al-Zarban Manufacturing and Materials DepartmentSchool of Applied SciencesCranfield University, Cranfield, MK43 0ALe-mail: s.g.alzarban@cranfield.ac.uk

Filipa CostaCentre for Competitive Creative Design School of Applied SciencesCranfield University, Cranfield., MK43 0ALe-mail: f.f.costa@cranfield.ac.uk

Oluwatobi OlajideCentre for Competitive Creative DesignSchool of Applied SciencesCranfield University, Cranfield., MK43 0ALe-mail: o.o.olajide@cranfield.ac.uk

Hordur SveinssonCentre for Competitive Creative DesignSchool of Applied SciencesCranfield University, Cranfield., MK43 0ALe-mail: h.sveinsson@cranfield.ac.uk

Han XuCentre for Competitive Creative Design School of Applied SciencesCranfield University, Cranfield., MK43 0ALe-mail: han.xu@cranfield.ac.uk

1 Introduction

Innovation in today’s commercial environment has speedily become the backbone of any organisation. Looking especially at the technology based product markets such as mobile phones, computers etc; the lifespan of most consumer goods have been going shorter and shorter over the years. Product wars between top brands have spiralled, and innovation has definitely become the key to gaining effective competitive advantage.

In the fiercely competitive world of today, adopting solely the high quality/ low price/ differentiation business strategies for innovation is no longer sufficient to guarantee firm success. There is a need for an added strategy for speed and flexibility (Takeuchi and Nobaka, 1986); especially in SMEs.

A ‘success strategy’ for SMEs is even more so important because according to the European Union commission (2012), SMEs represent more than 99.8 per cent of the total enterprises in Europe. This means that the survival of these smaller companies both individually and combined as a whole are very crucial to economic stability. Even though a very small proportion (0.2%), the size of larger companies mean that SMEs are however faced with fierce competitive battles for survival in the market.

Continuous innovation is now accepted to be important in any organisation; but with turbulent battles from larger enterprises in industry, SMEs find that in order to stay ahead in the market and prevent not bing pushed out of the market, they have to be fast paced in all their dealings hence showing that they are usually constrained with time.

The new product development process has to be extremely time efficient, and for especially highly differentiated innovative ideas, SMEs have to move in to the market as quickly as possible in order to secure their first-mover advantage that could easily be taken by these larger organisations with larger innovation facilities.

Although understanding the need to move quickly in their NPD processes, many SMEs are constrained financially to do so. Competing with the big players in the market is a myth for many SMEs, and even those that exhibit bravery and forge ahead to try, are held back because of insufficient finance.

Efficient money management is very important in any organisation. But with the erratic nature of the new product development process, many NPD projects are abandoned half way due to insufficient finance, and in some other cases experienced NPD managers are discouraged from even going down the route of NPD.

Faced with limited finances, SMEs also find it difficult to draw in the best out of the labour market.

And if they do strive for the best, many of them only have resources to employ only few of them meaning SMEs are also faced with insufficient human resources.

Having the right team handling the NPD/ Innovation process is however significantly important. It can even be said that the team is a huge determining factor as to whether the project becomes a success or failure.

A mix of highly skilled members exhibiting time and financial management skills amongst others will be ideal. In SMEs where the team would however be in small numbers, these skills will have to be embedded alongside their other individual functional expertise that each member brings into the team.

The Challenges of constrained time, money and human resources are common across most SMEs; hence a proven strategy or methodology for continuous innovation success despite these challenges is essential. This paper will be addressing this by providing a proven route to the same end goal of successful innovative NPD within these restrictions.

2 Literature Review

New product development (NPD) is a valuable strategic part of any innovative company that recognises it as a prime source of competitive advantage (Owens and Davis, 2000). In fact, the profitability and/or survival of a company in today’s economic climate, has slowly become a factor of whether or not the company continuously invests in NPD (Owens, 2007). After careful studies, many authors have come to the conclusion that new product development is a big key to company success (Booz et al, 199l; Cooper and Edget, 2003; Wheelwright and Clark, 1992).

Although more visible in larger companies, this study focuses on NPD in small to medium enterprises (SMEs) whose performances economists believe strongly influences the wealth of nations and the growth of their economies (Ebrahim et al., 2010). Their survival will be determined by their ability to manufacture and supply more, at competitive cost, in less delivery time, with minimum defects, using fewer resources (Ebrahim et al., 2010). When it comes down to it, it all lies upon the managers of SMEs and their wisdom and strategic thinking to overcome the struggles of bringing NPD project deliveries on time and on budget.

The Iron triangle; identifying the triple constraints in any project (quality, cost and time), has been popular amongst project managers for project success measurement for over 50 years (Atkinson, 1999). However, it is important to note that SMEs are not scaled-down versions of large companies; they are generally independent, multi-tasking, budget constrained, with informal structures and small teams.

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Hence, a more agile management, capable of changing routines and strategy when needed is therefore essential (Ebrahim et al., 2010; Nicholas et al., 2011).

Nicholas et al. 2011, states that the most important NPD best practice is to develop a clear and appropriate strategy for the company specific case. Some authors (Oorschot et al., 2000 and Dragut, 2001) however argue that radical NPD can’t be planned and controlled with traditional techniques due to the high level of uncertainty in the design tasks and its interrelationships within the time frame given. In fact, this contradicts one of the product development myths, which entails sticking to the set plan. Thomke and Reinsten (2012) defends this by arguing that it is important that the initial plan should be treated as an initial hypothesis that needs to be constantly revised.

2.1 Technology-driven Innovation

A new technology, scientific breakthrough, or a new combination of technologies is the driving force behind the creation of new products (Herstatt and Lettle, 2004). Technology-driven innovation focuses on research and the researcher’s desire to develop ground-breaking technology which is superior to existing technologies (Jorgen Rosted, 2005). The company will expect the new technology to possess qualities that will make it profitable (Jorgen Rosted, 2005), while uncertainty and risk are also higher for technology driven new product development projects (Johan and Marcel, 2012).

Since there are so many patterns in the innovation field, the core process of technology-driven innovation has two different facets according to Langdon (2011):

- For companies that apply science and technology to the creation of progressively more advanced technology-based products, exposing and understanding the inherent possibilities in science is essential to innovation.

- On the other hand, for companies in services and distribution, technology-driven means something much different; it generally means applying technologies developed by others to create a competitive advantage in operations.

Differentiating itself from User driven innovation, Technology driven innovation (TDI) projects differ from UDI projects in relation to their origin. There are at least five more identifiable differences, namely technological uncertainty, market uncertainty, R&D investment, development time, and the degree of innovation (Johan and Marcel, 2012).

Apart from that, user-driven innovation requires substantial resources for mapping, analysing and

assessing customer needs, while technology-driven innovation often will require more resources for new technology development that competitors do not have first-hand access to (Jorgen Rosted, 2005).

Although, most companies should ideally master both technology-driven and user-driven innovation (Jorgen Rosted, 2005), taking innovation heads on solely by TDI is more attractive to many SMEs. This is because of the substantial amount of money needed even before starting the UDI process.

2.2 Time and Budget Constraints in SMEs

Timing of NPD has become crucial for the success of the new product in the market place (Dragut, 2001); and according to Ebrahim et al., (2010), time in NPD has an almost 1:1 correlation with NPD cost.

Due to increased competition not only at home but from also from companies abroad and the rapidly changing nature of technologies in the market, a study done by Owens(2007), revealed that 87% of about SME managers admit to the increased pressure for faster NPD processes. They however admit also that they face delays in their NPD processes as catching up with time is an issue in SMEs. About 42% of SMEs (Owens, 2007), also stated how limited financial resources feeds directly into delayed NPD processes amongst other reasons. Hence evidently portraying the reverse of the famous saying ‘time is money’; in this case, ‘money is time’.

Various authors on studying SMEs have concluded that SMEs are more constrained financially than larger companies (Beck and Demirguc-Kunt, 2006; Owens, 2007). With the change in economic climate requiring continuous investment in NPD by companies for sustained profitability (Owens, 2007), one could argue that financial constraint really is detrimental to the company development. To defend this case, as reported by the OECD (1997), financial constraints has not just been a culprit for inhibiting or slowing down NPD processes, it has been a re-occurring obstacle to business and company growth.

As there is a feedback effect of financial resources on time, inadequate resources mean NPD processes will take longer; overall, the longer an NPD process takes, the more it costs, and so the loop keeps going around until the project is abandoned for becoming unprofitable/ uncompetitive (Ozer,2004). For projects that do not get abandoned, the costs for coming late into the market are also considerably large. According to Hutlink et al. (2000), coming into the market six months late even though on budget costs the products about 33 percent less profits over five years.

In order to meet time and budget constraints, SMEs potentially benefit from the use of digital tools, such as,

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CAD packages, electronic mail (e-mail), rapid prototyping technologies and new communications tools (e.g. Skype) (Fixson and Marion, 2012 and Ebrahim, et al., 2010). With these tools however, effective time, money and people management techniques have to be adopted.

2.2 People in NPD

The considerably smaller pool of human resources (in terms of number) at the disposal of SMEs when compared to larger companies requires that people within the SMEs are multi-tasking. Having a multi-tasking team therefore necessitates cross-functionality across NPD teams.

According to Bunduchi (2009), cross-functional teams are perceived to be more creative, and also produce a variety of knowledge and greater problem-solving capability. In his study he established that, by stimulating creativity amongst a multi-functional NDP team, shorter development time and higher product innovativeness, especially in situations when knowledge is limited, will be achieved (Bunduchi, 2009). Just having a cross-functional team however doesn’t directly imply success in NPD. The successful cross-functional teams are the ones who can overcome the misunderstandings and conflicts from seeing the same information through different perspectives. These teams achieve higher performance and outcomes when they meet more regularly and with informal communication rather than each element working in a particular phase of project (Bunduchi, 2009).

Due to the increase in the internationalisation of companies and the globalisation of markets, more companies have employees from different cultures and countries (Puck et al., 2006). This feeds positively into creativity due to the fact that minds from diverse backgrounds interact, drawing out various points of views for problem solving and innovativeness. Managers of multi-cultural teams would however need “to be attuned to different cultures and communicatively competent, in order to increase the rate of creativity and innovation.” (Gassmann, 2001).

Apart from the having a cross-functional and multi-cultural team, NPD success is also associated with the SMEs attitude towards creative risk-taking as teams with the drive for risk-taking have the key ability to develop more innovative products. However, most Managers have the politics of “get it right the first time” and don’t allow their team to learn by mistakes (Thomke and Reinertsen, 2012). This on the other hand, is understandable as risk taking going badly could cost the company hugely; and for an SME that is constrained with financial, resources this would be very frightening.

Creativity will also entail that NPD managers provide creative atmosphere for the team as a common

innovation killing mistake managers make failing to realise the importance of keeping their team focussed and motivated (Chong et al., 2012).

In selecting the people that would be involved with an NPD project, there is generally no best test for mangers to know the team traits to cover the range of skills needed in an ideal team (Goffin and Mitchell, 2005).

According to Prichard and Stanton (1999), the Belbin Test, can be used in commercial organisations and management consultancies as a tool to build effective teams. This test is characterised by having nine important roles in a project team: The Implementer; the Coordinator; the Shaper; The Plant; the Resource investigator; the Monitor/evaluator; the Team Worker; the Completer-finisher and the Specialist (Belbin, 1981). These roles are then categorised into three distinct project role categories: ‘the thought-oriented category’ which have the ‘Plant’, ‘Specialist’ and Monitor/Evaluator’ roles within it; ‘the people-oriented category’ which have the ‘Coordinator’, the ‘Team Worker’ and ‘Resource Investigator’ roles within it; and finally ‘the action-oriented roles category’ which has the ‘Implementer’, ‘Completer’, and ‘Shaper’ roles within it.

The Belbin framework is just one of many “team role” specifications available, and with its birth being 1981, one could argue that it is somewhat obsolete for innovation teams today; especially in comparison with newer team role frameworks such as that of Kelly and Littman (2006)’s ‘Ten faces of innovation’ which is similar to the Belbin roles but arguably more suitable for innovation teams.

Just like in the ‘Belbin roles’, ten roles were identified, and according to Kelly and Littman (2006), having one or more of the roles in a team can help create a broader pool of innovative solutions. The ten roles being: ‘the Anthropologist’; ‘the Experimenter’; ‘the Cross-pollinator’; ‘the Hurdler’; ‘the Collaborator’; ‘the Director’; ‘the Experience Architect’; ‘the Set Designer’; ‘The Caregiver’; and ‘the Storyteller’. The ten faces also follow the same pattern of sub categorising the faces into three distinctive categories namely: the ‘Learning personas’, the ‘Organising personas’ and the ‘Building Personas’.

Although team members have more capabilities to play a particular team role, this may change according to the situation and even in the absent of any team role someone will play that it (Goffin and Mitchell, 2005).

To complement and support the limited NPD internal resources in SMEs, external resources such as: subcontracting and networking would prove beneficial. According to Alarap (2012), in the case of resource constraints, SMEs need support to compete and survive; and subcontracting and networking are the best solutions. Many authors defend this solutions as they

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give the possibility to “achieve economies of scale beyond the reach of individual small firms; a window on technological change, sources of technical assistance, market requirements and strategic choices made by other firms” (Alarap, 2012; Xie et al 2010). Ultimately these solutions can lead to a reduction of project time and human resource gap. On the other hand, it could be argued that it is just a resource trade-off whereby a greater proportion of the budget is spent to compensate for inadequacy in human and time resources.

The reviewed literature proves the need for a new methodological approach for efficient new product development. This is especially the case in SMEs that potentially are prone to negative effects of constrained time money and people. These three factors (time, money and people) could then be said to be the three legs that balance NPD;

whereby equal attention would have to be given to each for a well balanced and successful innovation.

3 Research Motivation

To validate the need for research into efficient management of time, money and people constraints

during NPD in SMEs, a survey was done on NPD project managers/ owners of 20 SMEs involved with technology based new product development.

The purpose of the survey was to investigate into exactly how constrained SMEs are in terms of time money and people during NPD. Looking into the general attitudes of these SMEs towards NPD, the survey was able to gather information on reoccurring behaviours of SMEs during NPD. Results from this survey detailing the questions asked can be seen in Table 1 below.

As can be seen, many SMEs today still face slow NPD project lifespan. For technical products with short lifespan, late entry into the market will be detrimental to the SME.

Funds allocated for NPD projects as can be seen are also very small. From the survey, many of the SMEs were predominantly around the £5,000 to £15.000 bracket of allocation for NPD projects. About 12% of them even admitted to allocating £5000 or less for NPD.

As discussed earlier it is also evident that SMEs are really constrained when it comes to people. Many of these SMEs cannot afford more that 5 team members on an NPD project. It is interesting to note that 95% of these companies recognised the benefits of having multi-functional teams. Many of them had an equal mixture of specialists including Engineers, Designers, Managers, finance specialists, and manufacturing specialists.

Constraint Survey Question Answer Options No. of Responses

Tim

e What is/was the time (Lifespan) of present/last your

NPD project?

3 months or less 2

3-12 months 3More than 12 months 13

Mon

ey

In your present/last NPD project, what is/was the project

deliverable budget (this excludes salaries and utility

costs)?

£5000 or less 2

£5000- £15,000 4

More than £15,000 10

Peo

ple

In your last/present project, how many people were/are in

your NPD project team?

5 people or less 76-20 people 7

More than 20 people 3How many of the team

members are/were working as full time on the NPD project

3 people or less 84-25 people 9

More than 15 people -Are/were there a diverse distribution of specialist

backgrounds in the team?

Yes 19

No 1

Fig 2: Survey Results4 The Case Study

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Table 1 Survey questions presented to 20 SME new product development managers for research question validation.

Dashes (–) indicate Zero (0) values

Fig 1: NPD tripod balance legs

The case study company is a small to medium enterprise with less than 20 employees and a handful of outsourced human resources. With the aim of overcoming the odds of failure in penetrating in a highly competitive market; a team of five people, including NPD researchers, engineers, designers and innovation managers were recruited to handle the new product development project process.

Using the case study of the new product development process of a technical health monitoring device in a SME, the paper aims to provide NPD managers with an adaptable methodology that would guarantee success in their projects especially with the constraints of time, financial and human resources.

In the next part of this paper, whilst explaining the project methodology, at each stage, attention will be given to the three most important resource constraints common to several SMEs today, providing detailed explanations of the roles of each of these factors at each stage in of the NPD process and how they were managed, hence achieving innovation success.

4.1 Case-study Scope

Time 3 monthsMoney £5000People 5

Time: Time is very critical for NPD, especially for SMEs. In most conditions, no matter how big the project is, the time is always not enough. In this case, the team had just three months in total to deliver the final product innovative prototype from concept.

Money: In this case study, the team was awarded with a budget of £5,000 the whole NPD process. The budget

however only includes direct project specific expenses and excludes wages, utilities and facilities.

People: In this particular case study, the Manager Director selected the team members based on their backgrounds, experiences and motivations. The team was formed of five people, from different functional backgrounds (Designer, Engineering, Business/ Marketing, Manufacturing and Innovation management). The team was also culturally different (Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, China, Portugal and Iceland).

5 Methodology

Incorporating the stage-gate and the development funnel methodologies (Cooper, 1986; Wheelwright and Clarke, 1992), the figure 3 below, is a diagrammatical overview of the process that the team took in the NPD process. From the diagram above, each stage is represented by how much time and money was exhausted. In the next sections of this paper, the methodology will be explained in further detail, emphasising on the role of time, money and the NPD team at each phase.

5.1. The Project Kick-off Phase:

Many NPD project methodologies begin right at the research phase of NPD development. It is important however to know that it is very possible that the team gathered together for this project may just b working together as a group for the first time. This is especially so if the team members are from various functional backgrounds. Due to this fact, some steps need to be taken to ensure that the project goes on smoothly even before starting it off. The steps that were taken at this phase in the case study were:

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Fig 3: Methodology

i. An Informal Social Event

Being a multicultural team, with language barriers, different behaviour, attitudes, values, working styles and backgrounds, experience and technical expertise; it is essential to develop a relationship and build trust among the team. For that reason, before starting the project, the case-study NPD team had their first informal social event. Gassmann, (2001) and Ochieg, (2009) defend this technique as well a team building event to potentially increase the rate of creativity and innovation in a multicultural team.

Three main subjects were addressed at the informal social event. These were:

a. Discussing their culture, their experiences, backgrounds;

b. Understanding Individual team member expectations and aims for the project;

c. Identifying and choosing democratically the persons among the members to take essential roles during the project.

The outcomes of this technique permitted the team to potentially break cultural pre-concepts and understand the social commonalities among the team.

ii. Team Rules

Conflicts are inevitable in any project involving people; and in fact can even be more

significant in cross-functional teams. As these situations cannot be avoided, they can be minimised. This is important as according to the study done by Owens (2007), one of the reasons for slow NPD project process is poor communication and lack of it involvement among the NPD team members.

In the present case study, the team decided to spell out their own team rules, mostly based on how to deal with disagreements. Of course as teams vary, the rules required will be different from team to team; however there are some suggestions that can help cross-functional innovation teams are presented in Table 2.

Rules Comments1 Agree on standard way

of communication (e.g. emails)

This makes communication easier when is not possible to talk face to face

2 Respect each person’s opinion

This should avoid friction

3 Meet time schedules in deadlines and team meetings. If not always warn them in advance.

Underlines the importance of everyone delivering their tasks on time; also proves as a sign of respect for team members when being on time

4 Provide Feedback Enhances team performance; helps building trust and ensures common understanding

Table 2: Team rules suggestions.

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Although team rules can help define guidelines for overcoming misunderstandings and conflicts by seeing the same information through different perspectives, the applicability of this tool depends on the team’s effort and motivation. An incentive or punishing system can help to maintain the team rules during the project; therefore each team should also find what works better for them.

iii. NPD Team Roles

The NPD team in the case-study knowing the importance of understanding the role each person brings to the team, did a test to realise their Belbin roles within the team. The test was done two weeks of starting the project due to the fact that the team within those initial two weeks were just getting to know each other and their working habits. After two weeks, a rough knowledge of what roles are more suitable to each individual team member will be known.

Belbin RolesThe Resource Investigator The ‘fix-it’ person, locates

resources, links with others outside team

The Plant The person with lots of ideas, creates

The Shaper Is task oriented, drives actions, focused

The Implementer: The practical organiserThe Team Worker The mediator, manages

conflicts, the glueThe Coordinator: The one who guides,

coordinates, and supportsThe Completer/ Finisher The progress chaser, keeps on

time, detailsThe Monitor/ Evaluator The analyst, evaluates, and a

strategistThe Specialist The expert, provides specific

knowledgeTable 3: Team Roles in creative organisations

The Belbin test entailed that each team member identified the roles he/she believed they are amongst these nine roles, but then also looking outwards to see if the other team members agreed to his/her identifications. Each team member was then assigned to the role that was voted by most of the team, to be the most suited to that team members traits (according to the Belbin test). As these roles are not functional, the purpose of identification of these roles within the team is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each team member, and also, at what stage of the NPD process he/ she will be most valuable to the team.

The approach taken on completing the Belbin test (Table 2) was based on the individual’s perspective of their most preferred roles (identifying three main roles

in the left column) and the least preferred roles (identifying three main roles in the right column). Besides this, each of the other team members had to identify one role that they believe team member clearly demonstrates (left column) and one role that they believe the team member does not demonstrate (right column).

Most preferred

Team Roles Least preferred

Implementer

Shaper

Completer-finisher

Co-ordinator

Resource investigator

Team Worker

Plant

Monitor/evaluator

Specialist

Table 4 Example of Belbin Test framework.

To achieve better team performance, the NPD team should have a mixture of role types (Prichard and Stanton, 1999), and in cases that they do not, they should find a way to address the deficit of roles e.g. by using their networking contacts to cover these roles when needed.

It can be argued that 2 weeks is too short to for the team members to understand each other deeply enough to identify the roles each of them bring to the team; however, with the constraints of time, decisions have to be made more quickly in SMEs practicing NPD.

5.1.1 Team Good Practices

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Personal solid dotsTeam opinion linear dots

The table 3 summarises the tools and in which stage they should be used, as guidelines for team good practices at the ‘Kick-off phase’ of the project.

Good Practices Project Stage1 Informal Social Events Before the project starts and in

the end of each important milestone

2 Team Rules Preferably before the project starts

3 Teams Roles by Belbin/ Faces of Innovation Test

Preferably in the first project stage (e.g. more and less 2 weeks after project starts)

Table 5 Summary of Team Good Practices.

5.2. The Research Phase

Before starting up the NPD process fully, it is important for the team members to soak themselves in enough knowledge in the subject area. This is even more so important because the team members are from various functional backgrounds; as the NPD team members are few, they will all need to come up to speed to have equal knowledge in the basics of the project.

This research stage calls for the creative intellects of the people performing the research, as anything, including abstract technology research may form basis for hybrid innovation. Care has to be taken not to go too far away from the NPD project subject matter otherwise unnecessary time will be spent gathering un-useful information.

The Research phase in the case-study NPD project was split into two stages: Technology research and Opportunity mapping

Being technology driven, as mentioned earlier, it was focussed on applying the knowledge of already existing technology and evaluating the possibilities in order to create more advanced new technology-based innovations. To do this, deep immersion into the various kinds of technology available was important. The case-study NPD team did the research. The technology key areas were:

Current Technology: This relates to researching into technologies that already exist on the commercial market. These could either be technology that already exists commercially in technology-based products or even available for purchase solely. The technologies could also be either closely linked to the subject area of the NPD project in question or even abstract.

Future Technology: The second stream of technology research was research on technologies that even though already existing, are not yet commercially available. These technologies include those that are just spinning of university research

projects, new innovations that have not been approved for commercialisation etc.

Technology Legislation: Thirdly, as the case-study the NPD was in the health sector, it was important to immerse themselves into the health technology legislation/ regulations.

Software: The proposed health monitoring device was one that would transfer information from hardware to a software interface. Due to this fact, it was important for the team to immerse themselves in software technologies.

Materials: The health monitoring device in the case study had a requirement of being small and compact. This meant for the NPD team that they had to find out micro- materials that will fit the purpose of the functions of the device.

Alongside the research the team in the NPD case-study researched into the possible consumers of the product. Although the project was technology driven, they believed, understanding the final consumers would be important for all round immersion into the project. In fact, Saul and Jeff (2006) explained that ‘disruptive’ innovations are now usually a product of the intersection of user insight and technological know-how; hence, making technology an input to the strategy process (Saul and Jeff, 2006).

The second stage of the Research phase was the ‘opportunity mapping’ phase, and it involved mapping out the close competitors in the market and researching on specific aspects of their device technologies. Opportunity mapping was done based on various factors including price, device weight, internal memory, battery life etc. After mapping out the devices with similar offerings to their proposed device, the team were able to realise where exactly in the market they would want their device to penetrate; hence, identifying their potential closest competitors in the market.

The next step after identifying their potential closest competitors was a process which was termed by the team as the “dissecting tactic” whereby the technology components of the competing devices were taken apart for evaluation. This meant that they could learn quickly from their competitors, emulate the positives, and also learn from the negatives of the competing devices.

After intense research, keeping track of all the information available could sometimes prove hectic. To solve this problem, the NPD team developed an organising mechanism whereby they put all the information received in a card-like template that could be easily understandable at a glance (Figure 4 below).

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Fig 4: Research Cards examples

5.2.1 Time

For the research stage, the challenge is how to quickly the team could understand the context and access to the product. Deciding to spend more time to research related information, understand competitors was proved cleaver, actually, the team saved more time on stages afterwards due to this phase.

A time scale was established at the beginning for the span of this phase. This is because the research phase if not well managed, can eat deeply into time as there is never enough research.

5.2.2 Money

Considering the financial demands of the entire NPD project, the team made sure that minimal amount of financial resources were spent on this stage. The team made use of several free resources available and only spent financial resources when it was absolutely necessary. At this stage, the team found that networking

connections proved vital when it came down to saving financial resources.

In the technology research stage, the internet was a vital free (so to say) resource that the team took advantage of. They also took advantage of their networking connections. The team members via networking were able to contact universities, and innovation institutes for insights into technologies (both existing and new).

Some research however needed the input of financial resources. For example, investigation into the technologies of competing devices meant that the team had to invest in the purchase of some of these devices. They, through connections were able to acquire some of them for free and also at discounted prices.

5.2.3. People

The size of the NPD team meant that the input of all the team members were vital at this stage. After understanding the key areas for research, each element chose the areas that they had more knowledge and/or more interest. This way, the motivations could appease the amount of new knowledge and its complexity of the research with time constraint.

It is at this Stage that strategic thinking should start. It is crucial to create a strategic way to achieve the aim and plan carefully.

The major players in this step are normally, the so called thinkers-orientated people: Plant, Monitor Evaluator and the Specialist (from the Belbin roles) or the learning faces of innovation: the Anthropologists, the Experimenters and the cross-pollinators. The team members with these capacities are good on planning all necessary steps and evaluating them. The people oriented (Coordinator, Team Worker and Resource Investigator) in the team also play important roles at the initial part of the project, as they have the ability to support and serve as glue for team.

5.3 The Ideation Phase

Following the ‘Research Phase’, the ideation phase as the name implies was the point at which ideas for the product were generated. The team developed ideas using two tactics:

Internal Idea Generation: At this stage, the team gave themselves a time frame for individual idea generation. Several measures were taken in order to ensure that quality and creative ideas were generated. First of all, the team made sure that they created an environment that aided creativity. These kinds of environments include well ventilated rooms with simple creative tools like white boards for sketching or even as simple as post-it note pads

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for visual representation of ideas. In generating the ideas at this stage, there were very limited restrictions on the type of ideas to be generated. As restrictions sometimes kill creativity. At this stage, the team was able to generate approximately 50 ideas internally.

External Idea Generation: Apart from generating ideas internally, firms could potentially benefit from gaining ideation insights from external sources, and combining these ideas with internal ideas generated for technology advancement (Chesborough, 2003). Involving external sources mean that a larger pool of ideas from various perspectives will be generated. After individual idea generation from the NPD team members, they organised an ideation workshop which resulted in the generation of approximately 100 more ideas making a larger pool of approximately 150 idea from the entire ideation process. The ideation workshop was organised to include expert insights from creative designers, engineers, and a few other experts from other fields.

5.3.1 Time

Just like in all the phases of NPD, poor management of time at the ideation could be detrimental time-wise to the entire project. Time management is even more important at the open innovation stage. As understandably, many people fall into the trap of wanting to spend a large amount of time on gaining insights from external people at the ideation phase of the project it is the role of the co-ordinator to set a time limit on time spent at this phase.

There should not be a temptation however to put too little time at this stage though. The team would need to agree as to what the maximum time they can afford at this phase without jeopardising the delivery time of the entire project, and allocate this time.

5.3.2 Money

Most of the resources used for generating ideas at this phase were from the ‘Research phase’ of the project. This was especially the case at the individual idea generation stage of this phase hence, financial resources were kept low. The idea generation stage however drew out some stationary costs. This is because as mentioned earlier, steps had to made to ensure there were creative environments for the team to work in.

Acquiring ideas at the open innovation stage on the other hand brought about a little more financial expenditure than the individual idea generation stage. This was because the team had to pay for the external

knowledge that was brought in to help with the ideation process.

Once again, networking connections came in handy as many of the people brought in for the ideation phase came in for free as a favour to one or more of the team members, and even those that had to be paid, the team were able to negotiate minimum wages.

5.3.3 People

When it comes to generating ideas, Belbin’s Plant role or the experimenter face of innovation is the most capable to easily create and have ideas, but also, can be easily carried away in this process. However, within a team with fewer plants, the other types of roles could have more difficulty on contributing to new ideas. They can even by rationalising and over thinking, kill the creative environment, which would have hard consequences for the project. So, finding a balance is probably the best solution.

A well balanced team for this phase of the project is ideal but not common; hence employing the brains of other plant-like characters outside the team would prove beneficial in teams with limited people resource. This was done by the case-study, as design oriented as well as strategic thinkers were invited for an ideation workshop to help at this phase.

5. 4 The Prioritisation Phase

Choosing the best idea from a pool of potential ideas is always tough. At the ideation phase of the project, the NPD team acquired 150 ideas altogether. This shows the effectiveness of open innovation.

They were now left with the task of having to down-select these ideas to one that can finally be worked with and modified to perfection.

The team solved this problem by splitting the prioritisation/ down selection phase into two stages:

Initial Down-selection: On receiving the large pool of ideas, the team realised that because the restrictions for idea generation were kept minimal to boost creativity, many of the ideas even though innovative, turned out to be un-useful. The team before evaluating the 150 ideas drew up an evaluation matrix. In this matrix, the team were able to score the ideas over 10 under three major criterions. The first of these criterions was ‘Costs’. Evaluating each idea, the team did a rough estimate on how much they thought production of each idea would cost the firm. Cost was believed by the team to be very important as an innovative idea that costs a large sum of money in production may end up being unprofitable for the firm.

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The ideas were then scored based on their ‘Technology Readiness Levels’ (TRL). Initially introduced by NASA in the 1980’s, the TRL is a measure used to check how mature a technological product is in its development (Sadin et al., 1988). Using the TRL level conundrum, and looking into the various technologies needed to fulfil each of the idea demands, the team assessed at what TRL level they believed each of the technologies in each idea was; hence favouring ideas whereby the technology needed for prototype development were at or close to or at TRL level nine, which is: already commercially available.

Thirdly, the team scored the ideas based on their perceptions of ease of use of the device idea by the final consumers. The trend with technologies in the past decade has been that technology has become easier and easier to use by the final consumers, and also, being a health monitoring device means that an overly complex product may not be welcomed by the potential final consumers.

After scoring the ideas based on Costs, TRL and Ease of use, the team was able to down select the 150 to roughly over 20 ideas. The team however found that some of these ideas were very similar, and also, some of these ideas even though wonderful were incomplete. The team then decided it would be best to combine similar ideas as one, and find ways of completing incomplete ideas, either by adding two incomplete ideas to make up a whole, or if it was the case that they believed an idea was extremely innovative, adding the characteristics of the incomplete ideas to every other whole idea so as eliminate bias during the next prioritisation stage.

Final Down-Selection: From the initial down selection stage, the team were able to achieve nine ideas. These nine ideas were all viable based on the three criterion set up by the team during the initial down-selection stage. The team decided that in order to choose one final idea from these nine, external opinions would be needed. The criteria of “ease of use” from their initial down-selection, like the others were based on their perceptions; they however wanted real opinions from some of the potential end users as they believed that after the costs of production, making a product acceptable by the final users was important.

The next step was then to mock up real models using Computer aided designing (CAD) for visualisations of these ideas, and then to set up surveys with potential end-users. Being a health monitoring device, they split the consumers into

two set groups: one of them being: the people who will be monitored, and the second being the health officials who will be working with the information from the monitored results.

The survey was kept simple. For the first set of end-users (the monitored), the aim was to identify of the idea out of the nine would be most comfortable for their use, and for the health experts, which of the nine ideas will be most practical for them to use.

The results of these surveys after being compiled gave the team a little more insights into the use of the device and also helped them to make a decision on the final idea. The team were able to choose the two most ideas after the surveys, they then evaluated the final ideas based on costs and TRL level once again, and as a team, realised the final idea to go forward.

5.4.1. Time

The prioritisation phase was one of the most time-consuming phases during the project. This is because of the time spent analysing and re-analysing each individual ideas for careful down selection. This phase if rushed could mean that some potentially innovative ideas would be lost.

Having a clear down-selection/ prioritisation method is very important for time-management at this phase. Looking at the case-study NPD team, once they had scored each idea based on their three criterions, it was easy for them to choose which idea went through and which ones did not; thereby saving time by eliminating the possible conflicts of interests that could have occurred otherwise.

5.4.2 Money

The prioritisation stage demanded a little more from the project budget than the previous stages. This was especially true at the second down selection stage.

At the initial down selection stage, close to no monetary cost was expended. The second down selection however required that the team set-up workshops with consumers. Although once again, network connections ensured that most of the end-users were available for the survey freely, the team had to travel to several locations to visit experts in the health and safety field for the second strand of the surveying.

The NPD team did all they could to ensure that they were able to meet with the experts closest to them so as to minimise the travel costs.

5.4.3 People

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This stage required more coordination and organisation skills, and as well people who are action-orientated. In order to down select the large pool of ideas to one, coordination and organisation skills were essential. Consequently, the Belbin team roles that would potentially play a big part at this phase are the Shapers, Implementers, Completer-Finishers and the Co-ordinators.

5. 5. The Implementation Phase

The implementation phase of the project is point whereby after all the idea attributes have been decided upon, steps to realise a working prototype of the idea can now begin. The implementation stage was divided to two stages:

Prototype Design: The prototype design stage was further divided into three sub-stages:

i. The System design: This could also be called the functional design. It is always important before starting to finalise the design of the product to draw up the design of the entire system. This entails deep thinking into how the product will be used by the different end-users identified. A flow chart of how the device will be used from the time of purchase to the time of product expiration will prove very helpful at this stage. This is because the way a consumer will use a product could influence how the various components of are assembled on the device.

ii. Emotional design: The appeal of a product; technology based or otherwise to the final consumers when it comes to choosing over another product with similar functionality, usually comes down to the emotional connection the consumer has with the product. This is very obvious in the mobile phone industry whereby some products even though with less functions over all, are chosen over others because of reasons like “ ease of use”, “beautiful”, etc. It is therefore not just enough to design the functions of a product but to design how the product will execute these functions. For example, if a product will have “lights” for a specific function, questions like: ‘how would the lights display’, ‘what colour would the light be’, ‘what signal do you want the lights to send to the consumer, and how best would it do this’, etc. need to be answered. This needs to be done for every specified function of the device.

iii. The Appearance design: Finally, after the functional and emotional design has be specified, the next step would be to begin modelling the appearance. This includes deciding on the exact components needed for circuit board development, and also drawing up the external appearance of the product.

Prototype Building: After agreeing on all the

design aspects from the previous stage, the prototype had to be modelled to exact measurements using CAD modelling techniques for shell 3D printing. The circuit board was also built alongside.

Prototype Evaluation: After developing a prototype, there would be need to evaluate it and possible correct and re-build until the prototype is good enough for market introduction. Although the case-study NPD team took the ‘get it right first time’ approach; not ignoring the importance of proper evaluation, the team invited a few potential consumers once again. Demonstrating the prototype the team were able to get insights as to how the product could be improved. Their ‘get it right first time’ approach worked for them as only minor issues that required minimum changes were raised.

5.5.1. Time

As the three stages involved at the implementation phase required substantial amount of time and expertise involvement, the team decided to subcontract the prototype building aspect of this phase. This meant that the prototype design could be done alongside the prototype building.

Care is needed to be taken as there were dangers of wasting too much time during subcontract negotiations and communications. The team foresaw the possibility of this time wasting, and decided to subcontract outsources that were at close proximity to them, hence eliminating the time that would have been spent travelling back and forth or the waiting times that would have been wasted during email back and forth conversations.

For the circuit board building, the team employed the services of a company that was only walking distance to them. The other subcontractor that was responsible for 3D printing the product shell for their prototype was only a 30mins train distance to the team as well.

Not many SMEs have the advantage of being at very close proximity to relevant subcontracting companies,

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like the team in the case-study, but it is important that when choosing the subcontracting company, distance should be one of the key deciding factors among others.

At the prototype evaluation stage, the team found that their ‘get it right first time’ approach came to their advantage in saving time; proving that the right kind of push can produce positive results.

5.5.2. Money

The implementation phase of the project was the most expensive phase cost wise. One of the major reasons was the fact that some of the implementation stages had to be subcontracted to external experts. Larger organisations have advantage over SMEs at this stage as they are equipped with readily available human resources.

The costs did not begin at the point where the subcontractors started to work, but at the point whereby the team began to seek out the right subcontractors for their project needs. Visits to several potential subcontractors had to be done to ensure that the right outsource was chosen.

Negotiating skills of one or more of the team members had to come to play at this phase in order to minimise the costs of subcontracts as much as possible.

5.5.3. People

When it comes to design the prototype the Industrial Design expert was the key element. The skills of production of CAD models and rapid prototypes make them very valuable. However, he was not alone in the process; in fact, the designing the prototypes requires constant communication with the ones who will build it, the engineers.

In the case study, the prototyping building service was subcontracted because of two reasons: there were no one in the team with knowledge and also due to lack of time do it at good quality.

As the language between designers and engineering experts are not the same, it is most probable that conflicts will exist between them at this Stage. The major conflict in the case study was the ignorance of how difficult it was to make changes in the design, due to several discussions between the engineers and Industrial Designer. Who plays the Team Work role, can interfere and help manage the conflicts.

6. Results

Overcoming the constraints of only 3 months, £5,000 and 5 full time team members on the NPD project, the case-study team was able to deliver a working prototype. In this section the results from each phase of the NPD methodology will be reported. This will be done again laying emphasis on the tripod leg constraints of SMEs pursuing new product development: ‘time’, ‘money’ and ‘people’.

6.1. Time

During the NPD process, the time was distributed between nine major tasks:

Individual Tasks Group Task : times when all the team members focused

on the same task, working as a group; Team Meetings , with the Managing Director; Meetings with Externals (e.g. meetings with experts and

subcontractors); LAB : laboratory work with suitable equipment for

prototyping; Travel time; Time spent when organising Workshops; Time spent attending a Conference; and finally, Time spent at Social events (e.g. dinners, lunches etc.)

Figure 5 below, represents for each Stage: the time distributed between the nine major tasks (in %); also the in percentage, the total amount of time spent at each phase of the project. It also illustrates, the total cost in percentage per phase.

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Fig 5: Case study results.

The Research phase of the project; as can be seen above, took approximately 5% of the time within the 3 months. The time spent during this phase was majorly from individual hours researching on technology and other key areas. Consequently, the team spent significantly more than half (67%) of their time working individually. Cost on the other hand was only 1.7% of the £5,000 budget.

At the Ideation phase, from the diagram it can be seen that the ‘group tasks’ came into play strongly with 36% of the time spent on Group tasks and approximately 30% on individual tasks. The group tasks saw a rise in percentage from the Research stage because the group spent a significant amount of time together preparing for the ideation workshop. Time and Money took approximately 2% of the total time and budget respectively.

Taking 14.5% of the total time, the Prioritisation phase was the second most time consuming phase during the project. Money consumption at this phase was also high at close to 2% of the total budget. The three most time consuming activities during this phase were: individual tasks, group tasks and Team meetings. Team meetings took a higher amount of time at this phase because many decisions had to be made in terms of idea selection. In terms of cost, the main money drainer was the cost of travel around to meet with experts in the field and consumers for their insights for down-selection.

Compared with the other phases, the Implementation phase required the maximum amount of resources. As this is the phase all the other phases were building up to, getting this phase right meant success of entire project. 79% of the project was spent at this phase with 61% of this 79% on individual task. This was because most of the team/ group decisions had already been made prior to this phase. Money wise, the implementation phase was also exhaustive. 70% of the project finance was expended at this phase.

Being a small team, it was vital that all the team members were present and commitment every phase; and this was the case. Tasks were split equally amongst the team up until the Implementation phase where subcontracting was done.

7. Discussion

Judging from the responses from the survey undertaken by 20 Small to medium enterprises’ NPD project managers/ team members, SMEs who are generally under resourced in Time money and People require a proven strategy to overcome these barriers for effective new product development. This section of the paper will be discussing, analysing and evaluating the results achieved by the case-study NPD process/ methodology in terms of the triple constraint tripod legs as discussed throughout the paper.

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7.1 Time

Starting by analysing the challenge of Time constraints in SMEs, implementing strategic thinking across the NPD process is a key to effective time management. Strategic thinking involves planning and time control with flexibility - rethinking time during the process and adjusting the time plan from time to time to reflect new improvements or obstacles, as was done by the team in the NPD case study.

Planning time alone may not be sufficient for effective time management. The team cooperation, especially in the case of multicultural and multi-functional team, is another important factor that can have a huge impact on time. Working habits of various individuals vary, and open understanding and cooperation is the most efficient method to work together for effective time management.

At the implementation phase of the NPD process, the team in the NPD case-study found Subcontracting to be an important tactic adopted for time management. Subcontracting even though carried out at the implementation phase of the case study NPD process could be useful to any NPD team at any phase where limited time and limitations in expertise may cause time wastage if not carried out. Subcontracting however may prove to be expensive, hence it is the role of the team to analyse properly their proposed process and identify the point at which subcontracting would be most beneficial so as not to trade off time for excess costs.

The get it right first time technique adopted by the team at the implementation phase, even though worked, could bring about complications if not adopted properly. Although the idea was to potentially get things right first time in order to reduce time wastage that would occur if work has to be re-done, this technique can only work if every member of the team is highly motivated to achieve good results from the NPD process. The project manager/ director will need to be careful not to force this technique of the NPD team but propose it in a way that they will be encouraged to accept it

7.2 Money

The erratic nature of new product development makes ensuring the limited financial resources available during NPD is sufficient for the entire process a difficult task for many SMEs. Hence, strategically managing finance is important.

A clear plan on how the available money will be spent over the course of the process is extremely important earlier on at the beginning of the process. What many project managers will find however is that this plan will need to be revised and re-visited continuously as different factors come to play in the later stages of the project. One of these factors is the

difference between forecasted costs and actualised costs. The NPD team in the case-study encountering this problem at the implementation phase of the process in terms of sub-contract costs, had to rely on negotiating tactics to reduce costs and also revise their cost plans to accommodate the unexpected costs incurred.

With a clear plan, NPD teams still need to find ways to reduce costs in any way possible at each stage of the project. Like with the case-study NPD process, using advantages of freely available resources such as: networks/ connections for free or almost free external input, online research domains (for the research phase), free software, and even taking full advantage of the expertise of every member of the team, would prove very beneficial in terms of money at many stages of the NPD process.

Care would however need to be taken about the trade-off between cost and quality, as taking steps to cut costs could affect the quality of work. For example, networks/ connections may not in itself the best source for expert/ external knowledge as the right connections is very important as money spent on the wrong insights will not only possible jeopardise/ slow down the end results of the project, it will also mean financial resources that would have been valuable at other phases of the project would have been wasted on valueless insights. Also, although maximising the expertise of each team member is a very good way to ensure costs of subcontracting work are kept low; time efficiency would also need to be considered.

7.3 People

The Kick-off phase off the NPD process could be argued to be the most important in terms of team management in any NPD process. This being due to the fact that many factors relating to team dynamics are decided upon at this phase.

Identifying the individual traits of each team member using the ‘Belbin test’, the team were able to split tasks accordingly to each their individual traits. This process could potentially however encounter some drawbacks. First of which is the argument brought forward by Goffin and Mitchell (2010), stating that although team members have more capabilities to play a particular team role, this may change according to the situation; hence tasks drawn out for individual team members based on their perceived traits from the first 2 weeks may need to be revised as time goes on. This was the case in the case-study NPD team as it was observed that moving on from phase to phase, one or more of the team members started to portray a different trait/ face/ role from what was seen in the previous phases. This then causes a mismatch in trait against tasks in some tasks.

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Secondly, the Belbin framework is just one of many “team role” specifications available, and with its birth being 1981, one could argue that it is somewhat obsolete for innovation teams today; especially in comparison with newer team role frameworks such as that of Kelly and Littman (2006)’s ‘Ten faces of innovation’ which is specifically suited for innovation teams. The Belbin test however is vastly accepted across organisations and even empirically as a relatively easy to use intuitive tool for team role identification in people management (Parkinson, 1995; Aritzeta et al., 2007; Smith et al., 2012).

The case study NPD team found each of these roles to be important at specific stages of the process. These can be seen in Table X below.

Roles Explanation Phase Application

Belbin (1981)

The Resource Investigator

The ‘fix-it’ person, locates resources, links with others outside team

Research Ideation

The plant The person with lots of ideas, creator

Research Ideation Implementation

The shaper Is task oriented, drives actions, focused

All phases

The team worker

mediator, manages conflicts, the glue

All phases

The coordinator

The one who guides, coordinates, and

supports

All phases

The completer/ finisher

progress chaser, keeps on time, details

All phases

The monitor/ Evaluator

who is an analyst, evaluates, and a

strategist

Research Prioritisation Implementation

The Specialist expert, provides specific knowledge

Research Prioritisation Implementation

Kelly and Littman (2006)

The Cross Pollinator

External explorer;, brings revelations from

other industry and applies it to the project

Research Ideation Implementation

The experience architect

designs compelling experiences to connect at

a deeper level with consumers

Ideation Implementation

Observations from the case study showed that all of the team members one-way or the other took over the due to the limitations of resources, the “Shaper role” at different stages of the NPD process. The resource constraints (time, money and people) of the project could be said to be the reason for this as there is a need for each of the team members to be motivated/ driven from within without external force. Although the team members were specialists in their specific fields, external people such as subcontractors, and other experts at various stages of the NPD process also fulfilled the specialist role.

Outside these roles, the team also found two roles as defined by Kelly and Littman (2006) to be evident in the team: “the cross-pollinator” and the “experience architect”. This roles were observed to be very important at the research and implementation phases respectively. Table X below shows the important roles exhibited by the case study NPD team during their process.

Apart from the roles of the core team members involved with the NPD process, SMEs should not overlook the value of bringing in external resources at specific phases of the process. This because asides the value of expert knowledge, it is always helpful to have critical opinions from a different point of view. That being said, care has to be taken by SME so as not to divulge patentable information to the wrong people. With financial constraints, legal battles for idea/ concept ownership should be the last thing any SME should be involved with; hence, information protections such as secrecy/ non-disclosure agreements must be put in place before giving other parties access to NPD information.

8 Conclusion

The good practices and management methods proposed in this paper, fills the gaps found in the current literature review. This paper however has limitations, such as: lack of sufficient empirical data to proof the three main NPD constraints in SMEs; the NPD methodology and management methods proposed in the paper also lack sufficient validation.

The study could be argued to have low applicability especially in very complex new products; in radical innovation; and consumer-led innovations; as the methodology is only proven via the case study, which is technology-driven innovation.

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Further research is also recommended on the triple constraints of SMEs in new product development as postulated in this paper. This is due to the fact that SMEs represent approximately 99.8 per cent of the total enterprises in Europe, meaning a proven strategy for success in overcoming the three constraints will not only be beneficial to them individually as companies, but potentially to their economies as a whole.

This NPD methodology followed by the case study complements the NPD methodologies presented in the Literature Review with the added perspective of managing the tripod leg constraints: time, money and people. This methodology can be adapted in SMEs to suit their company NPD requirements for NPD success.

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