The Role of Information Technology in Product Development: An Introduction - Information Technology and Product Development - page 10

of collaborative innovation and knowledge co-creation. Part III (comprised of one
chapter) draws on the various chapters and identifies some of the important themes
and issues for future research on the broad topic of IT and product development.
The specific chapters and their brief descriptions are given below.
In Chapter 2, Robert G. Fichman and Satish Nambisan propose a
complementarities-based theoretical framework to examine the business value of
IT applications for product development. Many companies that have made consid-
erable investments in IT applications to support their product development activities
have realized limited value from such efforts. In this chapter, we argue that a deep
understanding of the complementarities that exist in the product development con-
text is critical to ensure that business value is derived from the IT applications.
We propose a multi-level complementarities-based model of IT innovation and
business value to explain the factors that shape the success of IT-enabled product
development. Our model posits that firms will obtain more value from innova-
tive IT investment initiatives when the resulting IT applications are fitted into a
system of initiative or product development context-specific complementary orga-
nizational elements (strategies, structures, processes, etc.). Further, firms will get
more value from IT initiatives when investment is combined with certain firm-level
elements such as a business strategy that is especially amenable to IT support,
strong IT capabilities, and a modern organizational architecture that incorporates
a cluster of practices associated with “digital” organizations. The model can guide
researchers and managers in identifying the firm-level pre-conditions for realizing
value from investments in IT to support product development and specifying neces-
sary complementary investments in organizational change associated with product
development.
In Chapter 3, Emma O'Brien, Darren Harris, and Mark Southern emphasize the
importance of experiments to develop a better understanding of product develop-
ment processes. In today's dynamic business world, the ability to continuously
innovate and respond to customers' needs is fundamental to success. To enable com-
panies to do this a thorough understanding of their internal processes is required.
Experiments can provide significant opportunities for companies to generate knowl-
edge about their product development processes. This chapter examines the role of
experimentation in designing robust product development processes and the role of
IT in supporting this. It outlines an IT-based knowledge-management system to sup-
port the creation, transfer, and the use of knowledge amongst engineers in designing
and conducting experiments that lead to robust product development processes. The
authors conclude the chapter with a discussion of the key issues for future research
on this topic.
In Chapter 4, Julian Malins and Aggelos Liapis focus on the application of IT-
based tools in product design consultancy firms. Product design and development
processes do not always proceed in a linear step-by-step manner, starting with the
initial problem leading to a solution consisting of a number of clearly defined steps
in between. As such the development of IT-based tools to support this process is
also far from straightforward. It requires considerable creativity to design IT-based