Engineering´s interactions with marketing groups in an engineering-driven organization

It is widely acknowledged that engineering personnel should work with marketing and sales personnel to increase the chances of market acceptance of new product ideas. While many studies have shown that products are more likely to succeed when this integration occurs, there has been little observation of the actual interactions and the underlying sources of communication difficulties. This paper, based on nine months of participant observation in a single firm in the computer industry, presents engineering objections to information from marketing groups and then discusses the complaints marketing people have about engineering. The author argues that for complex systems products in technology-driven environments, there may not be a dyadic interaction between marketing and engineering but rather many conflicting requirements coming from marketing groups representing different customer groups. In such situations, decisions concerning the overall system architecture may be among the most critical strategic decisions