The Business Value of Information Technology in Product Development Process: An Empirical Study

This paper establishes a multilevel business value model of information technology in the product development process by adopting the grounded theory, which not only identifies the key IT variables and pertinent intermediate variables, but also discovers the interaction and complementary characteristics of these variables. By collecting data in five telecommunication equipment suppliers, the proposed model shows that, IT affects the product profit indirectly via the interaction between IT and the intermediate variables from different levels. The complementary factors must be in good relationships for the sake of gaining more product profit.