Determinants of a sustainable new product development

Organizing and managing new product development has been perceived as challenging issues in both academia and industry for several decades. The aspect of sustainability has often been neglected in new product development although new product development allows addressing sustainable characteristics upfront in the product life-cycle. The purpose of this paper is to link sustainability and new product development by providing a conceptual framework emphasizing the interconnections of sustainability and new product development with a life-cycle and product-focused perspective. Such a link of sustainable new product development with a life-cycle and product life-cycle point of view has not been presented so far. This paper intends to elaborate on this connection, so that it leads into the subjects of new product development and sustainability, culminating in a life-cycle approach supporting a sustainable new product development. The conceptual framework indicates that it is important to involve life-cycle management, and product life-cycle management to reach a sustainable new product development. The product-focused product life-cycle management approach gives the necessary structure for a jointly sustainable new product development on grounds of cross-departmental and cross-company processes, data, and people. The factor of collaboration integrates the life-cycle-based concepts to reach a sustainable new product development. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it offers a novel conceptual framework of a sustainable new product development by means of product life-cycle management and thus extends current research on green new product development. Second, it provides a life-cycle management focused approach to support collaboration by complexity reduction, process harmonization, and technology.