Best practice indicators for new product development at universities

It is public domain that the development of new products is a crucial activity for business success. Since new product development (NPD) is only conceived as a process within the industry environment, nearly all of the studies on this topic are empirically driven. The most important, and common ones, are based on surveys that look for the habits, methods, and approaches of the best performers, in order to distil NPD best practice. Academics and practitioners generally agree that the environment at small new ventures may differ significantly from the NPD environment at large and medium sized firms. Nevertheless, the advantages attributed to the NPD best practice at large and medium sized companies may also benefit small organisations, including university projects. However, the application of this best practice within university projects needs more exploration. This gap in the knowledge should be investigated since cooperating with external partners a key trend in NPD. Here, the scientist’s expertise and the extensive resources of research universities can make them excellent partners. This study aspires to answer the question “Is new product development at universities performed properly?”. It addresses this debate by carrying out a systematic review, a content analysis, and a benchmarking performance in order to identify six indicators that are associated with higher degree of NPD success in the university environment. Subsequently, empirical data regarding the use of those practices at universities is collected using a questionnaire, then the data is analysed statistically. The results report an alignment of the NPD executed at universities with the NPD best practice indicators. The fulfillment is also compared with industry execution. Finally, the NPD best practice indicators, particularly those that universities perform noticeably better or worse than industry, are discussed. The study provides a tool-questionnaire to organisations interested in assessing outsourced NPD processes (particularly those performed at universities). The results obtained with this tool can be benchmarked with the industry and universities’ data. This study also allows teams engaged in NPDs at universities to determine the weaknesses (i.e. methods and practices that are not usually applied) in this specific environment.