The Role of Information Technology in Product Development: An Introduction - Information Technology and Product Development - page 9

1.5 The Focus of the Topic and Its Target Audience
Despite the critical role that IT has come to play in supporting product and service
development, there have been very few topics on this topic. Existing topics that have
dealt with IT and product/service development issues fall into two broad categories.
The first category consists of topics with a general focus on IT strategy and
applications. These topics, written primarily for practitioners, offer only a passing
mention of the potential for applying IT in product development and innovation
activities (e.g., Pearlson, 2004; Clarke, 2007). However, there is no specific focus
on product/service development or on research issues in that context. The second set
of topics has its origins in the engineering field and focus more on IT applications in
project management, concurrent engineering, and related topics (e.g., Stark, 1992;
Turner & Simister, 2000). However, these topics have limited focus on manage-
ment issues and, moreover, they are based primarily on the engineering management
literature and as such do not draw on research in other management areas.
This topic focuses solely on IT and product/service development, and the various
chapters draw on a wide range of management disciplines including organizational
behavior, strategy, marketing, and operations. As such, it is designed to address the
above gap in the literature and to promote a more integrated research approach in
this area.
This topic is intended to appeal to two sets of audiences. The primary audience is
academic researchers in the management field. For this audience, the topic offers an
in-depth theoretical analysis of the wide range of organizational and management
issues associated with the application of IT in product and service development.
By presenting a diverse set of theoretical perspectives and models, the topic will
hopefully serve as a reference source for researchers from different fields (including
information systems, marketing, operations, and organizational behavior) who are
currently pursuing (or plan to pursue) research in this area. Given the broad treat-
ment of the subject, the proposed topic could also serve as material for doctoral
level courses in information systems, information management, NPD, innovation
management, and other related areas.
The topic is also intended to appeal to researchers and other thought leaders
in consulting organizations such as PRTM, Gartner, and Accenture whose primary
area of interest is product development and/or IT applications. For example, many
such consulting companies have a practice that is devoted to guiding companies
in the deployment of PLM solutions. The models and concepts discussed in this
topic could serve as the foundation for developing a set of practical guidelines and
strategies for the management of PLM tools.
1.6 The Organization of the Topic
The topic is organized into three parts. Part I (comprised of four chapters) follows
this introductory chapter and focuses on the traditional areas of project and process
management. Part II (comprised of four chapters) focuses on the emerging areas