Postponement in New Product Introduction

摘要

Agility has now been a main research topic in the literature. There is much written on agility mainlyrnfocusing on manufacturing process and strategic processes. However, we argue that new product introductionrnshould call for agility as well, due to uncertainty about technological advances and customers’ demand. Arntechnological superiority alone may not guarantee success for new product introduction. We focus on the role ofrnpostponement for two main processes in new product introduction: new product development and new productrnlaunch. Postponement enables designers to incorporate the most current technological advances and user needs asrnthese co-evolve with the development process. Postponement can also significantly reduce risk associated withrnnew product launch. It thus can be expected that postponement will be increasingly employed in new productrnintroduction.