The influence of company's strategy on creativity and project results in NPD - case study

There has yet been a lot of discussion on how important creativity is for the process of new product development. In the globalized competitive world of constant inflow of new consumer goods it is extremely important to establish a successful information network of knowledge sources (e.g. academia) and product producers (e.g. companies). The core of this network should become new product developers which are provided with real time flow of accurate and proper information. The developers could be company or academia placed, or either dispersed to some other locations. Since the developers strongly rely on the provided information, it is essential to establish the appropriate level of trust and support between all involved partners.
In the year 2010 we had an opportunity to host at this course two companies concurrently, with two different development approaches. One company had a liberal view on a product development process and gave to the developers at the beginning only basic product constraints, while the other one set the product constraints much firmer. According to those constraints the teams took different approaches towards the new product development.