Knowledge transfer in new product development

Summary form only given as follows. Product innovation and continuous improvement have been viewed as discrete areas of research. The importance of innovation to the survival of organizations in an increasingly competitive environment has led to greater emphasis on improving the innovation process from conception through to design and development and launch. The identification of performance metrics for product innovation has contributed to improvements in new product development. Organizations can learn during the innovation process and hopefully improve the chances of a successful product launch. As well, after a new product has been launched, lessons learnt during that project can be applied to subsequent projects. In the first instance, an intra-project learning activity has happened. In the latter case, interproject learning will need to occur. Where these two types of learning are captured and applied to existing and current product development processes, the opportunity exists for improvement in innovation processes. If this is done on an ongoing basis, then an organization is exhibiting continuous improvement in its product innovation processes. Research is being undertaken with the objective of developing, testing and disseminating a methodology to support new product development knowledge transfer. The research is a Euro-Australian cooperation project known as CIMA (Continuous Improvement and Innovation Management) This paper presents some preliminary findings from an Australian case study for the CIMA project