Connecting strategic thinking with product innovativeness to reinforce NPD support process

Abstract

Strategic thinking is considered a significant business process by management experts due to it's appeal to strengthen organizational performance management and its effectiveness. Furthermore, new product development is regarded as the crucial operation of each and every industrial concern. Grounded in such rationality, the current study presents an attempt to connect the concept of strategic thinking with product innovativeness to formulate a diagnostic approach to reinforce NPD support process. The idea behind formulating such a research framework is to offer industrial leaders, a mechanism, that can offer connectivity among various aspects of operations linked to corporate strategy and product innovativeness. The research survey is conducted on 30 team member's representing new product development (NPD) operations at three selected work locations of a European multinational company. The study results highlighted the proposed theoretical connection between the two business operational areas; strategic thinking and product innovation. According to the study results, the key variables that have shown positive linkage among them were, early client involvement (product innovation) to target reach (strategic thinking); customer value (product innovation) to target reach (strategic thinking); early client involvement (product innovation) to customer value (Product innovation); management initiatives (product innovation) to collaboration (strategic thinking); management initiatives (product innovation) to communication (strategic thinking); and idea generation (product innovation) to responsiveness (strategic thinking).