Management of Technology and Innovation in Japan

Japanese New Product Advantage: A Comparative Examination 283
for cross-functional integration and initiation process). This means it is worth the
time and effort to carefully select members of a new product team, assembling the
appropriate knowledge and skill set in the first place so that the end result is a
truly superior new product. While integrating across functions and completing initiation
tasks are important, team proficiency ensures the quality of human resources
dedicated to the innovation enterprise is sufficient for success. The team
proficiency scale from this study can be used to assess quality. If quality is thereby
judged to be inadequate, the team may re-constitute or new leadership assigned to
increase the likelihood of exploiting the team’s capabilities. Additionally, training
in innovation and group endeavors can be provided so that the talents and energies
of individuals are properly harnessed, increasing collective proficiency over time.
Limitations and Research Implications
Our conclusions are qualified in several regards. First, data was collected in just
two countries, Japan and Korea, so generalizing the hypothesized model beyond
these settings is limited. Future research should examine the model in more countries.
But we chose Japan and then Korea due to their importance in the world
economy and because of the salience of their innovation output. Other countries
that are worth exploring in regard to new product advantage are Germany, the
U.K., Sweden, and the U.S.
Another limitation is that only three specific process antecedents were investigated
- ones that, based on the literature, warranted examination. Future studies
can investigate other precursors to advantage, as well as compare their direct and
interactive influences. One particularly intriguing variable is cross-functional integration.
This study showed it has paradoxical or mixed effects, so it would be
worthwhile understanding more of its influences and the conditions under which
they alter.
Another variable worth further probing is new product team proficiency. As
this was the first study to conceptualize and measure this construct, it is deserving
of additional study. Moreover, it was demonstrated to be the most influential
driver of advantage. As firms move increasingly toward team-based new product
development, it would be critical to understand exactly how this proficiency is
cultivated and applied toward innovation endeavors. Although we did not examine
it in this study, a team’s culture may be a major factor.
The final limitation is our conjectural explanation for the contrasting approaches
to innovation work between Japan and Korea. Although we propose
stage of industrialization and culture act as possible influences, later studies can
explicitly model and empirically test these effects. It would be particularly useful
in relation to the culture variable to go beyond the well-known Hofstede treatment,
which categorizes Japan and Korea as similarly collectivistic; other researchers
have argued that Japan and Korea are distant on this and other cultural
dimensions (Fukuyama 1995). Finer grained research tools may be required to
capture such nuances. All in all, we hope that this study has produced greater un-