Abstract
It has been known that New Product Development (NPD) is one of the most important issues to enhance competitiveness, and many researches have been speculated on successful NPD. This paper intends to investigate the impact of NPD competencies on financial performance. For analyzing the NPD competencies, New Product Development Scorecard (NPDSC) has been utilized as a self-evaluation tool for participated manufacturing companies in Japan. From NPDSC database, three factors, namely, "Development strategy and organization", "Development production technology" and "Utilization capability of tools and IT" were extracted as NPD competencies. Using the corresponding companies' financial bottom line indices, high correlations between these indices and NPD competencies were observed. At the same time, two business conditions such as production complexity and market uncertainty were taken up and a framework was developed to investigate those moderating effect on NPD competencies and financial bottom lines. From the results, both complexity and uncertainty could be considered as requirements for successful NPD. Particularly, correspondence to the complexity could be a trigger to achieve higher NPD competencies which can lead to enhanced managerial performance.
