The purpose of this paper is to clarify a mechanism whereby products with value dimension differing from those of existing products are continually developed, through case study of new product developments by firm that has, repeatedly, developed products that deviate from the industry's dominant product specifications.
In previous researches, although value dimension conversion processes, conversion endpoints, and its organizational management have been investigated, research targets were limited to a single round of value dimension conversion. Therefore, this paper attempts to examine a multiple value dimension conversion mechanism using the case study of three products -EX-S1, EX-F1 and EX-TR100- developed by Casio Computer Co., Ltd. in the digital camera industry.
The results shows that a firm-specific product view plays an important role in product development that leads to value dimension conversion. When the firm faces the competitive disadvantage in the existing value dimension, the discrepancy between the existing product development and the firm-specific product view becomes apparent. This causes the product development based on the existing value dimension to reconsider and leads the product development based on new value dimension. In addition, the firm-specific product view provides product developers with criteria of product development when they attempt to create new value dimensions, and they refer to the firm-specific product view to determines the priority among the product components.
In addition, this research indicates that product development organization that enables continual value dimension conversion keeps flexibility of human resources low and continuous commitment of leaders and members to the product development last for a long time. This organizational management makes it possible to share the firm-specific product view throughout product development organization, and two product development projects, value dimension improvement products and value dimension conversion products, can coexist within one product development organization.
