Collaborative Activities and IT support in New Product Development

Abstract: New Product Development is a key strategy for company performance. Competencies involved in those projects are numerous and varied. Companies increasingly involve their suppliers in codevelopment projects to gather the most relevant knowledge, improve product quality and reduce time to market. Different levels of supplier involvement are defined in literature: white, gray and black box according to their responsibilities. This master thesis focuses on  he collaboration between supplier and customer in the case of New Product Development.  eflecting on existing literature, this master thesis first proposes a new taxonomy of boundary spanning, based on four main areas: knowledge transfer, knowledge translation, knowledge transformation and coordination. Secondly, each area is broken down into collaborative activities, which in turn are linked to the proper Information Technologies (IT). Finally, this typology is successfully confronted to two case studies.