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Full Length Research Paper
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Critical factors for new
product developments in SMEs virtual team
Nader Ale Ebrahim*, Shamsuddin Ahmed and Zahari Taha
Department of Engineering
Design and Manufacture, Faculty of Engineering, University
of Malaya (UM), Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia.
*Corresponding author.
E-mail:
aleebrahim@perdana.um.edu.my. Tel: +60-17-6140012.
Accepted
15 July, 2010 |
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Abstract |
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Small and medium
enterprises (SMEs) are considered as an engine for economic
growth all over the world and especially for developing
countries. During the past decade, new product development (NPD)
has increasingly been recognized as a critical factor in
ensuring the continued survival of SMEs. On the other hand, the
rapid rate of market and technological changes has accelerated
in the past decade, so this turbulent environment requires new
methods and techniques to bring successful new products to the
marketplace. Virtual team can be a solution to answer the
requested demand. However, literature have shown no significant
differences between traditional NPD and virtual NPD in general,
whereas NPD in SME’s virtual team has not been systematically
investigated in developing countries. This paper aims to bridge
this gap by first reviewing the NPD and its relationship with
virtuality and then identifies the critical factors of NPD in
virtual teams. The statistical method was utilized to perform
the required analysis of data from the survey. The results were
achieved through factor analysis at the perspective of NPD in
some Malaysian and Iranian manufacturing firms (N = 191). The 20
new product development factors were grouped into five higher
level constructs. It gives valuable insight and guidelines,
which hopefully will help managers of firms in developing
countries to consider the main factors in NPD.
Key words:
Survey findings, new product development, factor analysis,
virtual team. |
