New Product Development At Different Stages Of Knowledge Transfer Performance Factors Research

In the Age of Knowledge Economy, knowledge transfer has been recognized as the key role for companies to obtain sustainable advantage in the market. However, nowadays, few studies were based on task characteristics and different phases of new product development (NPD) process.In the context above, after review of the previous relevant literatures, this paper chose two different phases of new product development (NPD) process—concept generating phase and test & update phase as study context. Three questions constitute the main content of this thesis. The first is to explore the difference of the communication media used in different phases. The second is to explore the relationship between the project characteristics and knowledge transfer. The third is to examine the moderating role of task characteristics to some of the relationship above. The research carries on through case study and SPSS statistical analysis.We find that: first, informal colloquium, face-to-face conversation, Email communication are the most frequent communication methods used in both phases; and then in activities, trust, prior experience, knowledge independent degree have positive relationship with the knowledge transfer, while team verticalization plays a negative role; what is more, in the concept generating phase, the individual property has positive relationship with the knowledge transfer; knowledge complexity has negative relationship with the knowledge transfer in the concept generating phase, while in the test & update phase, knowledge tacitness plays the same role. When examine the moderating role of task characteristics we find out that in both phases, as the team individualism increases, the role of knowledge independentness is strengthened; in the concept generating phase, as the task complexity increases, the role of team verticalization is strengthened, while in the test & update phase, as the task complexity increases, the role of team verticalization is strengthened. The research has explained every result after comparing them in two phases.