Speed: too much of a good thing?

Time-based strategy has become the latest key to competitive advantage. However, the implicit assumption that speed has a linear relationship with project success lacks examination. Several perspectives including time compression diseconomies resulting from the limits of the capacity for human information processing, bounded rationality of decision making, "absorptive capability" of organizations, and organizational learning, are applied to the study of new product development (NPD) teams. We argue that uncertainty is a critical contingency for understanding speed in NPD. We propose that whether speed has a linear or curvilinear relationship with success will depend upon the degree of uncertainty. Our results show that the relationship is curvilinear when either technology uncertainty or market turbulence is high but linear when such uncertainty is low. In contrast, we find a curvilinear relationship under conditions of low market newness but not under conditions of high market newness. An important implication is that it is necessary to analyze the source and degree of uncertainty of a project before a time-based strategy is selected. The limitations and future research related to these results are discussed.