A Three-Way Collaborative NPD Network between a Large Retailer and Small and Medium-Sized Suppliers: A Case of Win-Win Growth

Making efforts to break down the barriers between the intra-company departments as well as cooperating with external partners can become the driving force to create a successful innovation in the new product development (NPD) process. This study deals with how the key factors of collaborative innovation success are working in the process of NPD collaboration. Using case analysis of the NPD process, where a large retailer and small and medium-sized suppliers cooperate, we found that the small and medium-sized suppliers achieved greater ‘short-term’ performances in the collaboration than the large firm, although the long-term performance is not clear. Among the six antecedents of innovation success, relationship-specific investment played a critical role in motivating the supplier’s participation in the NPD process. Adopting a ‘closed’ network in which the two suppliers interact directly with each other and create new knowledge for the NPD process played an important role in producing a quality product in a reduced development time. Unlike previous studies about the retailer-supplier cooperation for NPD in the food industry suggesting that position differences cause communication problems which is a major obstacle to the NPD success. This study suggests that large retailer’s initiative role is a critical success factor in the NPD by the cooperation between small and medium-sized suppliers and large retailers.