Developing new products in emerging markets

Abstract

The research method employed for this study was a combination of quasi-participatory action research and the case study method. One of the authors, Ishwardutt Parulkar, was a core member of the ASR 901 project, intimately involved in every aspect of the project from conceptualization to commercialization. This author is also trained in the research tradition. Through the duration of the project, he took detailed notes about the project’s challenges, dilemmas, and key decisions. At the end of the project, he authored a white paper to capture the important takeaways from the project.

We complemented this rich firsthand knowledge with an in-depth case study of the project. For the case study, we gathered data from multiple sources — key respondent interviews, company documents, and secondary data from external sources — in order to understand the evolution of Cisco India R&D from the time of its establishment to the initiation of the ASR 901 project, as well as the activities during the project itself. We conducted 10 semistructured interviews encompassing all the key members of the ASR 901 team, the executives at the India R&D center, and the product champions at Cisco headquarters. This helped us gain multiple perspectives on the development of the product.

We wrote a detailed case study based on the information gathered from multiple sources of data. We had several extensive discussions with our practitioner author to ensure that the emerging framework accurately captured the innovation process, and we refined it as appropriate. We then distilled the important takeaways for managers.