New product development: discussion

Abstract

With India increasingly becoming the major provider of low cost services and products to the developed countries, there is increasing interest among Indian firms in products or services that can better exploit and capture superior value in this growing market. However, effective processes for creating superior products or services that command premium prices are not common among those Indian firms who have long been geared to competing at the lowest price. On the other hand a few Indian firms have consciously shunned the mass market and devoted their efforts to niches that that can pay premium prices for superior products or services. Both types of firms have explored diverse ways of improving their new product development capability and yield. In seeking to understand the complexities of the new product development (NPD) process in India, IIMB Management Review invited a panel of representatives from different sectors of the industry and academia to review the emerging opportunities in NPD in India, successful NPD initiatives, strategies for the development of new products, product development structures and processes within organisations and across partnering organisations, product development capabilities, and the issues and challenges in the commercialisation of new products. The panel also discussed how and why new product development in India differs from that in the rest of the world and whether India’s unique market composition and cultural diversity impacts new product development.