Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are considered as an engine for economic growth all over theworld and especially for developing countries. During the past decade, new product development (NPD)has increasingly been recognized as a critical factor in ensuring the continued survival of SMEs. On theother hand, the rapid rate of market and technological changes has accelerated in the past decade, sothis turbulent environment requires new methods and techniques to bring successful new products tothe marketplace. Virtual team can be a solution to answer the requested demand. However, literaturehave shown no significant differences between traditional NPD and virtual NPD in general, whereasNPD in SME’s virtual team has not been systematically investigated in developing countries. This paperaims to bridge this gap by first reviewing the NPD and its relationship with virtuality and then identifiesthe critical factors of NPD in virtual teams. The statistical method was utilized to perform the requiredanalysis of data from the survey. The results were achieved through factor analysis at the perspectiveof NPD in some Malaysian and Iranian manufacturing firms (N = 191). The 20 new product developmentfactors were grouped into five higher level constructs. It gives valuable insight and guidelines, whichhopefully will help managers of firms in developing countries to consider the main factors in NPD.
Nader
Ale Ebrahim holds a PhD degree in Technology Management from the Department of
Engineering Design and Manufacture, Faculty of Engineering, University of
Malaya. He holds a Master of Science in the Mechanical Engineering from the
University of Tehran with distinguished honors. He also has over 19 years of
experience in the establishment of the R&D departments in different
companies, heading projects as the project director and project coordinator and
implementing knowledge based system in the R&D department. His current
research interest focuses on E-skills, Research Tools, Bibliometrics and
managing virtual NPD teams in SMEs’ R&D centers. His papers/articles have
published and presented in the several journals and conferences.
Survey findings
new product development
factor analysis
virtual team
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