Collaborative New Product Development: Modelling Inter-Organisational Intensity

The increased pace of global change combined with the inherent risks that exist in the innovation and NPD process has accelerated the move towards more integrative models of innovation. This move has been broadly welcomed by innovation scholars and practitioners. However, successful collaborative innovation is still proving difficult to achieve. Previous research in this area has suggested that the intensity of collaboration plays an important role in achieving innovation success with more intense collaboration driving better outcomes. But to date, the concept of collaborative innovation intensity (CII) has not been fully operationalised. Because of this gap in our understanding of what constitutes CII, empirical studies have provided only limited insight into how intensely partners should be involved and so practitioners’ experience and unsubstantiated prescriptions remain the best guide to determine appropriate collaborative intensity levels. Utilising a positivistic philosophy, a measure was developed for the CII construct. Further modelling was undertaken to test the relationships between hypothesised predictor constructs, CII, and hypothesised outcome constructs. The population of interest was all Irish industrial firms involved in collaborative NPD in the B2B context. The unit of analysis was the dyad from one side of the partnership only. The methodology involved a cross sectoral postal survey of NPD managers and or CEOs. This resulted in 185 usable responses. These key informants completed the survey based on their perceptions of their relationship with their closest NPD partner. Goodness-of-fit indices for the CII scale development model were excellent with good to excellent indices reported for the predictor-CII-outcome model. Two rival models were rejected in favour of the second order factor model adopted for the CII scale. One rival predictor-CII-outcomes model (TCE) was rejected in favour of the SET developed model. The major theoretical implication of the results of this research is the development of a rigorous measure for the construct of CII. This scale was developed using a SET lens, consequently, this research makes a substantial contribution to both SET and RET. It is envisaged that this scale will aid managers in the development of a roadmap to more successful collaborative NPD.