New-product strategy and industry clockspeed

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Souza, GC; Bayus, BL; Wagner, HM
• 署名单位: University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park; University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1030.0172
• 发表日期: 2004
• 页码: 537-549
• 关键词: speed to market; time pacing; Markov decision processes

摘要

We study how industry clockspeed, internal firm factors, such as product development, production, and inventory costs, and competitive factors determine a firm's optimal new-product introduction timing and product-quality decisions. We explicitly model market demand uncertainty, a firm's internal cost structure, and competition, using an infinite-horizon Markov decision process. Based on a large-scale numerical analysis, we find that more frequent new-product introductions are optimal under faster clockspeed conditions. In addition, we find that a firm's optimal product-quality decision is governed by a firm's relative costs of introducing new products with incremental versus more substantial improvements. We show that a time-pacing product introduction strategy results in a production policy with a simple base-stock form and performs well relative to the optimal policy Our results thus provide analytical support for the managerial belief that industry clockspeed and time to market are closely related.