Postponement in New Product Introduction

Agility has now been a main research topic in the l it erature. There is much written on agility mainly focusing on manufacturing p rocess and strategic processes. However, we argue that new product introduction should call for agility as well due to uncertainty about technological advances and customers’ demand. A technological superiority alone may not guarantee succe ss for new product introduction. We focus on the role of postponement for two ma in processes in new product introduction: new product development and new produc t launch. Postponement enables designers to incorporate the most current technol ogical advances and user needs as these co-evolve with the development process. Postponement can also significantly reduce risk associated with new product lau nch. It thus can be expected that postponement will be increasingly employed in new product introduction.

Agility has now been a main research topic in the l it erature. There is much written on agility mainly focusing on manufacturing p rocess and strategic processes. However, we argue that new product introduction should call for agility as well due to uncertainty about technological advances and customers demand. A technological superiority alone may not guarantee succe ss for new product introduction. We focus on the role of postponement for two ma in processes in new product introduction: new product ...