Technological newness: An empirical study in the process industries

Technological change in product development is a crucial issue in the management of technology. The entire sweep of technological changes over the past hundred of years is, in essence, the sum of thousands of individual product development projects in thousands of firms. Yet the degree of technological change in individual development projects has not been extensively studied. This paper presents a four-dimensional characterization of technological newness for product development projects in the process industries in which product development is closely tied to process innovation. The characterization uses four dimensions of change that are required in the development of new products: chemistry, production equipment, fabrication technology and process control. Based on the framework of technological newness, the paper presents data collected on the degree of process change in a set of 20 product development projects conducted by a large manufacturer of advanced polymers. The data provide a clear demonstration of the value of the measurement framework, showing a strong relationship between the characterization of change and the project performance.