Summary: | 博士 === 國立中央大學 === 企業管理學系 === 103 === Based on the resource-based view, this research aims to understand the influences of both knowledge depth and knowledge breadth on product creativity, which includes product novelty and product appropriateness. Meantime, this research investigates how knowledge base influences new product performance through product creativity. A survey among the manufacturers in Taiwan resulted in 233 responses, or a response rate of 29.1%. The survey results show that the impacts of knowledge breadth on product novelty and product appropriateness are larger than those of knowledge depth. Both product novelty and product appropriateness help enhance product performance and the former has a significantly larger impact on performance than the latter. Besides, compared with knowledge depth, a company’s knowledge breadth further improves new product performance through producing novel and appropriate new products, i.e., through product creativity. On the other hand, compared with knowledge breadth, knowledge depth has more direct impact on new product performance and less impact indirectly through product creativity. Through understanding the relationships among knowledge base, product creativity and new product performance, this research contributes to the new product development literature and practices. The results here suggest that, when facing limited resources, a company evaluate its available resources, before deciding whether it should improve new product performance through strengthening knowledge depth or through expanding knowledge breadth leading to product creativity.
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