Abstract
This paper presents the quantitative analysis of the roles of information infrastructure and knowledge management at the development of new products on the basis of questionnaire to the Japanese firms. We proposed important hypotheses for the utilization of the Internet to improve the development of new products, and the organization of knowledge management. As a result, it is found that the role of the Internet is now still underestimated, even though the Internet is used to refer recent stage of technical investigation. We also find that the well organized knowledge management and information infrastructure such as the Groupware can shorten the development period of new products in a statistical and quantitative analysis.
