IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/ijitmx/v05y2008i03ns0219877008001382.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Benefits Of Ambiguity In New Product Development

Author

Listed:
  • ERIC BRUN

    (Department of Business Administration, University of Stavanger, 4036 Stavanger, Norway)

  • ALF STEINAR SÆTRE

    (Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway)

  • MARTIN GJELSVIK

    (International Research Institute of Stavanger, 4068 Stavanger, Norway)

Abstract

In this paper we challenge the traditional notion of ambiguity as an undesirable element in New Product Development (NPD) and explore how companies sometimes sustain or even increase ambiguity during their NPD projects. Based on qualitative analysis of case data from four NPD projects in the medical-device industry, we present a model by which this process can be better understood. We identify four ways that NPD projects can benefit from temporarily sustaining ambiguity: retaining fallback options, saving costs, saving time, and retaining ideas.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric Brun & Alf Steinar Sætre & Martin Gjelsvik, 2008. "Benefits Of Ambiguity In New Product Development," International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management (IJITM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 5(03), pages 303-319.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:ijitmx:v:05:y:2008:i:03:n:s0219877008001382
    DOI: 10.1142/S0219877008001382
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219877008001382
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0219877008001382?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eric Christian Brun, 2016. "Ambidexterity and Ambiguity: The Link Between Ambiguity Management and Contextual Ambidexterity in Innovation," International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management (IJITM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 13(04), pages 1-29, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:ijitmx:v:05:y:2008:i:03:n:s0219877008001382. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/ijitm/ijitm.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.