This research is at the intersection of open innovation and the use of information technology (IT) to improve new product development (NPD) performance. We investigate how a firm's open innovation climate, its IT orientation, and its external collaboration breadth influence the usage of new media (i.e. project wikis, cloud-based file sharing, and dedicated open innovation artifacts) and social networking IT (i.e. weblogs, Twitter, and Facebook/LinkedIn/GooglePlus) across the NPD process. We also examine the influence of the usage of these media on NPD process performance and subsequent project performance. We collected data from 198 USA respondents and 152 Australian respondents to test a set of nine hypotheses. Results show that an outward focus has a negative impact on the use of new media and social networking IT. Reflexivity, and innova tion and flexibility, had no significant impact on the use of new media and social networking IT. These results were stable between both countries. IT infrastructure positively influenced new media and social networking IT in Australia but not in the USA. The number of external collaborators also had a positive effect on the usage of new media and social networking IT only in the Australian sample. Interestingly, new media IT had a positive impact on NPD performance while social networking IT had no effect on NPD performance in both countries. Finally, NPD process performance had a positive impact on NPD project performance in both countries. Our chapter concludes with a discussion of our findings and their implications for research and managerial practice.@en

Information technology (IT) is the cornerstone of the modern new product development (NPD) process. A new generation of communication and collaboration tools has propagated into nearly all aspects of NPD. To better understand how these collaborative tools, such as wikis, cloud-based file sharing, social networking, blogs, and microblogging platforms like Twitter, are being used in NPD and what influence they have on NPD outcomes, we undertook a global study of collaborative IT tool use in 443 firms. We found that the usage frequency of these collaborative tools is currently low, but it is positively correlated with project performance. Our results also show that the best-performing projects use all of these tools more intensively than poorer-performing projects. In addition, the usage frequency of these tools differentiated the best from the rest in smaller and medium-sized firms but not in larger firms. Our findings suggest that NPD managers should encourage the use of new forms of communication and collaboration and should embolden and empower the migration toward these collaborative tools. Author Tucker J. Marion will host an IRI-sponsored webinar on this subject on April 1, 2016 at 12 pm EDT. Register to attend at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6567583436205158658.

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