IMPLICATIONS OF NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES WITHIN THE SWEDISH HIGH-TECHNOLOGICAL MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY BASED ON A MULTI-ASPECT APPROACH

Abstract: As business, technologies, and products changes so quickly in the modern day business environment, the complexity of launching new products into global markets increases. Therefore, the significance of the new product development (NPD) concept is rising, according to researchers. This master thesis is based, through a preliminary literature review, on the assumption that traditional NPD frameworks have deficiencies today. This is because as a NPD process is an on-going process that is performed repeatedly, the importance of putting forth new considerations to the NPD based on multi-aspect industrial characteristics today is needed for a sustainable NPD framework. Therefore, this study will put forth a new multi-aspect NPD framework with emphasis on technological-, global collaboration-, and financial elements to target the literature gap that is claimed to exist. The process of the research methodology followed a deductive approach, with an explorative-, descriptive- and analytical study. The collected data was of qualitative type, through 12 semi-structured interviews. A total of six Swedish high-technological manufacturing firms were interviewed, four of which were for empirical purposes, and two for contextual understanding. The author came to the conclusion that various deviations were found in setting the multi-aspect NPD approach in contrast to traditional NPD frameworks. The significance of “Open Innovation” concepts was adamant as being the stepping-stone for idea generation, conceptualization, and strategic partnership that was not brought up by traditional literature. Openness in all elements of the multiple-aspect NPD framework setup in this study was imperative, as the empirical findings suggested that the business environment for high-technological industries shifted towards an increased technological- and financial convergence. During the latter stages, minor deviations were found, with emphasis on collaboration elements between the R&D-, production- and marketing divisions within the firms.