Cross-Functional Cooperation with Design Teams in New Product Development

Bo Young Kim, Bum-Kyu Kang

This paper identifies the critical factors of cross-functional cooperation with design team in new product development (NPD) by a survey of 243 cross-functional team managers of consumer electronics firms. Recently scholars have suggested that the industrial design function is adopting a more prominent position in new product development for successful business, but the current nature of the design processes and roles in NPD is under-investigated with limited empirical research. This empirical research defines eleven critical success factors for the achievement of effective cross-functional teamwork with design team in NPD and provides evidence of the positive relationships of the factors with the co-work performance.