New Product Development: From efficiency to value creation

New Product Development - NDP is a major source of competitive advantage to companies. For decades researchers have studied the phenomena and various approaches have emerged over the years. Firstly, NPD was structured in clearly defined phases or stages to enable a quick and risk-free flow from idea to launch. Later, Concurrent engineering - CE, in which critical development phases are performed simultaneously, was successfully introduced by Japanese companies like Toyota. In recent years, CE has become a widely used option world-wide. CE proven benefits include reduced time-to-market; reduced human and capital cost, increased product quality; all factors related to project efficiency. More recently, Lean product development-LPD, validated some aspects of CE (e.g., overlapping of phases), but proposed a more structured way of reducing non-value added activities. The main objective of this study is to discuss the idea that thus far NPD research has mostly focused on efficiency - eliminating waste, reducing time-to-market and costs. This study also discusses the need for an emphasis on creativity in NPD to enhance value creation. In terms of organization, this study contains a literature review on CE, LPD, and group creativity. This study also proposes an abstract model combining concurrent and lean product development aiming at enabling both creativity and efficiency, consequently enhancing value creation. Lastly, limitations and opportunities for future research are proposed.