Uncertainty drives project activity in new product development (NPD), and its resolution is crucial to project performance. However, there is a major gap in understanding the causal links between different uncertainty types and the project activities they trigger. Engineering managers lack guidance on how best to respond to different uncertainty types. We close this gap by experimentally contrasting responses to two uncertainty types central to NPD: technical and organizational uncertainty. We describe responses with respect to core engineering project activities: representation, information, and knowledge sharing. We present evidence from an experiment involving 50 professionals and 74 master's students. The results show that uncertainty type has a significant effect on activity response, and that there is a significant ordering effect within this response. Based on the identification of a new response type, change of situation, our findings show that technical uncertainty drives change of situation and representation activity, while organizational uncertainty drives information- and knowledge-sharing activities. This provides the basis for three main contributions of this article. First, we identify “change of situation” as a new type of response to uncertainty in NPD. Second, we describe different responses to technical and organizational uncertainty. Third, we characterize an ordering effect in responses to uncertainty.@en

Uncertainty is central to engineering design and new product development (NPD). While there has been substantial focus on dealing with uncertainty in technical systems and design information, how engineering designers react to and manage uncertainty is also critical to performance. However, an important gap remains in understanding what activities NPD teams engage in based on the specific uncertainty types they face. This gap is investigated via a conceptual framework detailing four uncertainty types (technical, organisational, resource and market) and three project activities (information, knowledge sharing and representation). Evidence is presented from two engineering design cases with 45 interviews, observations, and secondary data. Based on this, specific links are described between uncertainty type and project activity as follows: technical uncertainty drove representation activity, organisational uncertainty drove knowledge sharing activity, resource uncertainty drove knowledge sharing activity, and market uncertainty drove information activity. These findings are developed into a number of propositional relationships between the four uncertainty types and specific project activities, which form the basis for a number of implications for engineering design research and practice.@en

Uncertainty perception plays a key part in innovative product development projects since they have high levels of uncertainty. Consequently, understanding the strategies that teams use to deal with uncertainty can point to key insights for improving project performance. Therefore, it is relevant to investigate this area of uncertainty perception and subsequent activity in product development project teams. In spite of the existing literature on product development and uncertainty, gaps remain in mapping the types of perceived uncertainty in different projects and also understanding of the influence of uncertainty on individual´s activities. We present evidence from a case study of two interconnected projects in a high technology company. The key results were the mapping of several uncertainties that are perceived by the team members in both projects and the activities triggered by different uncertainty types. Key insights from this study are the interconnections between uncertainties, affecting product development activities across projects. Despite taking specific counter actions in the first project, major uncertainties were still inherited by the subsequent project, significantly impacting the project´s early phases activities.This research generates three main contributions in terms of mapping uncertainties and triggered activities. The first is the existing of multiple perceived uncertainties interacting in both project types, which increases the challenges of the projects. The second is the uncertainty sets situations, which have a major role in the project in contrast to the single uncertainties situations, and has significant impact in the product development
projects and their performance, echoing also in the triggered activities. The third is the triggered activities which are different for single uncertainty types situations and uncertainty sets situations. @en