• 中国科学学与科技政策研究会
  • 中国科学院科技政策与管理科学研究所
  • 清华大学科学技术与社会研究中心
ISSN 1003-2053 CN 11-1805/G3

科学学研究 ›› 2024, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (4): 828-836.

• 科技管理与知识管理 • 上一篇    下一篇

不同战略导向下新产品开发优势提升路径研究

吕冲冲1,张宗泽2,3,孙俊勤4   

  1. 1. 兰州大学管理学院
    2.
    3. 兰州大学
    4. 西安交通大学
  • 收稿日期:2022-12-28 修回日期:2023-03-09 出版日期:2024-04-15 发布日期:2024-04-15
  • 通讯作者: 孙俊勤
  • 基金资助:
    甘肃省省社科规划青年项目

An Empirical Study on the Promotion Path of New Product Development Advantages in Different Strategic Orientations

  • Received:2022-12-28 Revised:2023-03-09 Online:2024-04-15 Published:2024-04-15

摘要: 基于254家中国制造业企业的调研数据实证分析了市场导向和技术导向在提升新产品开发优势中所发挥的比较效应,以及知识整合和组织忘却在其中扮演的中介角色。研究结果表明:市场导向和技术导向均能提升企业的新产品开发优势(开发速度、创新性),且市场导向对新产品开发速度的作用效果强于技术导向,而技术导向对新产品创新性的作用效果强于市场导向。市场导向和技术导向对两种不同的组织学习行为均有正向影响,但市场导向对知识整合的作用效果强于技术导向,而技术导向对组织忘却的作用效果强于市场导向。两种不同的学习行为在提升新产品开发优势中发挥着差异化的作用效果:知识整合对新产品开发速度的作用效果强于组织忘却,而组织忘却对新产品创新性的作用效果强于知识整合。通过进一步探究影响机制,发现市场导向通过知识整合影响新产品开发速度,而技术导向通过组织忘却影响新产品创新性。相关研究结论厘清了战略导向与新产品开发优势间的复杂关系,突破了原有研究仅从知识摄入的角度对组织学习进行划分的局限,阐明了战略导向在提升新产品开发优势中的路径选择。

Abstract: New product development (NPD) has been an effective mean for firms to survive and develop in the increasingly complex market environments. Therefore, a growing number of firms are striving to enhance their competitive advantages in the product markets by improving the NPD advantages (i.e. speeding up NPD and improving new product creativity). Accordingly, enhancing NPD advantages has become an important strategic activity for firms, and should be considered with their own strategic orientation. As a management philosophy that guides business activities, strategic orientation reflects firms' strategic positioning and is a type of potential resources of firms. In the process of NPD, the impacts of strategic orientation on NPD advantages needs to be realized through specific organizational actions. As the process of knowledge input and output, NPD can be regarded as the result of the integrating knowledge. Through organizational learning, firms can acquire new external knowledge, discover new uses for existing knowledge, or discard obsolete knowledge to update it quickly, thus laying a solid knowledge foundation for improving NPD advantages. However, organizational learning is a complex decision-making and behavioral process, which needs to be analyzed in the context of an organization's overall strategy. Unfortunately, existing research lacks in-depth discussion on the role of different strategic orientations on enhancing NPD advantages, how strategic orientations influence the choice or implementation of specific learning behaviors, and how different strategic orientations promote NPD advantages. To fill the research gaps mentioned above, this study subdivides firms’ strategic orientations into two types (i.e. market orientation and technology orientation) from the perspective of the reality of "market pull" and "technology push" faced by firms in the process of NPD, as well as existing related research. Based on this, the differentiated roles of these two strategic orientations in improving firms’ NPD advantages are discussed and their relative effects on firm’s NPD advantages are investigated based on resources-based view. To reveal the mechanisms by which strategic orientations affect firm’s NPD advantages, this study introduces organizational learning theory to explore the mediating role of knowledge integration and organizational unlearning on the above relationships. Empirical data from 254 Chinese manufacture firms reveal that both market orientation and technology orientation can effectively enhance firm’s NPD advantages (i.e. NPD speed, NPD innovativeness), and the effect of market orientation on the speed of NPD is stronger than that of technology orientation, while the effect of technology orientation on new product innovation is stronger than market orientation. Both market orientation and technology orientation have positive effects on two different organizational learning behaviors (i.e. knowledge integration, organizational unlearning), but market orientation has a stronger effect on knowledge integration than technology orientation, and technology orientation has a stronger effect on organizational unlearning than market orientation. Two different learning behaviors play different roles in enhancing the advantages of NPD. Specifically, knowledge integration has a stronger effect on the speed of NPD than organizational unlearning, while organizational unlearning has a stronger effect on new product innovation than knowledge integration. Furthermore, this study also found that market orientation affects the speed of NPD through knowledge integration, while technology orientation affects new product innovation through organizational forgetting. The contributions of this study reflected in the following three aspects. First, by revealing the comparative impacts of market orientation and technology orientation on firms’ NPD advantages, this study broadens the understanding of the complex relationship between strategic orientation and NPD advantages. Second, this study subdivides organizational learning behaviors into two types (i.e. knowledge integration, organizational unlearning), and investigates their differential impacts on NPD speed and creativity, which not only deepens the understanding that different learning behaviors bring heterogeneous NPD advantages to firms, but also breaks through the limitations of the existing studies that mainly split organizational learning from the perspective of knowledge intake, and provides a promising avenue for further study on organizational learning. Third, this study reveals that there are different paths of choice between strategic orientations and NPD advantages, which helps to deepen the understanding of how strategic orientations impact firm’s innovation performance from a new perspective.