Product development in the automotive industry: Crucial success drivers for technological innovations

Abstract

Developing new innovative products in the automotive industry means investing huge sums in advance, as one does not know if the product will be successful on the market after launch. Hence, companies are interested in knowing and measuring the critical success drivers within the development steps. The paper discusses the results of a qualitative meta-analysis of 16 empirical studies on New Product Development (NPD) success, which was carried out to gain deeper insight into these success drivers. Furthermore, based on the identification of three main dimensions (development process, resources and strategy), an explorative study in the German automotive industry shows that the findings are confirmed in practice as well. However, the results also indicate that there is still a gap between knowledge about practical relevance of those dimensions and the systematic assessment of these in the process. The study shows interesting approaches of best practices, such as the assessment of product advantage in combination with scenario analysis or the identification of appropriate innovations.