An Agenda for Future Research on IT and Product Development - Information Technology and Product Development - page 184

Chapter 10
An Agenda for Future Research on IT
and Product Development

Satish Nambisan

Abstract As the nature and process of innovation have changed drastically in the
past several years, so has the role of information technology (IT) in supporting the
innovation activities. The objective of this topic has been to examine the issues
related to the application of IT in product/service development from multiple dis-
ciplinary and theoretical perspectives. The various chapters have considered a wide
range of issues including the business value of IT applications, PLM implementa-
tion, virtual teams, customer co-innovation, and knowledge management systems.
The discussions in these chapters identified several issues for future research related
to the different topics. In this concluding chapter, I identify and discuss some of the
broader research themes that have emerged from the different chapters. By identify-
ing these broader themes, I hope to bring a sharper focus on and lay out a rich and
promising agenda for future research on IT and product development.

10.1 Introduction

As noted in the introductory chapter, in the past one decade or so, the nature
of innovation has undergone considerable change in most industries. Innovation
has become much more global and collaborative in nature. New innovation mod-
els involve networks of firms and emphasize distributed innovation processes. The
diversity and number of partners involved indicate the complexity of some of these
emerging models. Further, the continued pressure to reduce the time and cost of
innovation has forced many companies to adopt standardized product development
systems and processes. These changes have in turn enhanced the importance and
relevance of information technology (IT) in supporting product and service inno-
vation. Similarly, the wider adoption of enterprise IT applications such as ERP and
CRM has also enhanced the need to have similar standardized systems and applica-
tions that would not only support innovation management but also integrate it with
rest of the enterprise activities more tightly.