Research On The Influence Of Knowledge Management Motivated By Reward System On New Product Development Performance

With the background of knowledge economy, the performance of new product development (NPD) has become the determinant of the organizational competency, because NPD performance contributes to the total profits in a huge scale. In spite of a strong will to implement knowledge management, enterprises are usually facing the problem of how to make this achievement. The knowledge-based view suggests that new product is essentially new knowledge that is created by enterprises and the competition of new products is after all that of the capability of knowledge management. However, due to its long-input-little-output nature, knowledge management is not easily welcomed by most companies, and therefore, hard to be implemented by most innovative entities.This study first proposed a theoretical framework and then conducted a quantitative analysis by structural equation modeling (SEM), using data from a sample of120innovative firms in3Chinese cities. The study found most of the hypotheses supported. Knowledge innovation had a positive impact on new product development performance. In knowledge management (KM) system, the acquisition of knowledge had a strong positive association with knowledge integration, and knowledge acquisition and integration both have a positive impact on knowledge innovation. Moreover, higher level of organizational reward system brings higher level of knowledge acquisition and innovation. With the case study of Tencent Corp and Fenjiu Corp, the results of empirical study are examined to be reasonable.This study drew some conclusions that companies should, to level-up the financial performance of NPD, innovate and update knowledge by efficient knowledge acquisition and integration, meanwhile, companies should set up an open and reasonable system to motivate organizational KM activities.