Management of collaborations and conflicts in new product development

This dissertation is about managing collaborations and conflicts management in new product development. We investigate several theoretical and empirical issues on coordinating and aligning the NPD stakeholders in the context of R&D outsourcing and project management.;The dissertation starts with understanding the firms' motivations driving outsourcing decision. Chapter 2 highlights that an outsourcing decision is driven by multiple, and often conflicting rationales and proposes a "portfolio view" of outsourcing strategy. Chapter 3 examines the six outsourcing motivations (cost, technology, manufacturing, market, organizational, and strategic) driving the outsourcing decisions.;The dissertation also studies the selection of knowledge providers. Chapter 2 argues that the consistency between motivation (strategy), knowledge provider type and implementation process is the key of successful outsourcing. Chapter 3 further develops the concept of "matching" the motivations and providers types and quantifies how the "match" matters. Chapter 3 demonstrates empirically that a necessary condition for successful innovation outsourcing is a close fit between the outsourcer's motivations and the provider's client-specific strengths.;In addition, the dissertation provides insights on the choice of knowledge outsourcing process and contracting design (payment schemes). Chapter 4 compares two commonly applied processes---competitive bidding and sequential contracting and shows that competitive bidding yields good selection but weak contract inefficiency. In contrast, sequential contracting enables outsourcing firms to achieve perfect efficiency but results in poor selection. Specifically, sequential contracting dominates competitive bidding only when provider selection becomes less risky and more costly. Hence choosing a service outsourcing process involves a fundamental trade-off between maximizing the chance of selecting the best provider and the efficiency of contracting with the selected vendor. In addition, Chapter 4 reviews the implications of payment schemes in outsourcing contracting. We show that adding a seemingly bad input-only payment scheme (pay-per-project) can make the outsourcer better off in both processes: it helps to achieve perfect efficiency in a contract 'menu' and intensifies the competition between providers during selection.;The dissertation also studies operational methods in managing the collaborations within a project. First, Chapter 3 proposes a "contingent" framework for applying operational project management methods. Chapter 3 compares five commonly observed provider types (university, component supplier, competitor, customer and start-ups) and summarizes ten operational methods which improve project management effectiveness in collaboration with the provider. Chapter 3 show that some methods should be commonly applied across all types, while others should be applied to only specific provider types.;Second, the dissertation studies how three important managerial levers (signalling preferences, monetary bonus and social status) influence the project abandonment risk. Chapter 5 shows that signalling of preference by the function with less power (the process follower) can reduce the abandonment risk, but only if the more powerful party's ability to insist on its preferred solution is significantly limited. Second, heightening the stakes of the more powerful party (process leader) does not improve decision outcomes; on the contrary, it makes this function even more insistent on its preferred solution and increases the odds of escalation or failure. Finally, awarding status to the less powerful side for "winning" has an "equivalent" effect as heightening the powerful party's stake. The project abandonment risk is increased as the process follower's status concern arises.