The Learning Organization as Facilitator of Complex NPD Projects

Abstract

With rapid technological and market changes, new product development (NPD) complexity is a significant issue that organizations continually face in their development projects. The inability to recognize and/or manage complexity can cause the best‐intentioned projects to fail. By creating a learning organization attuned to complexity and its management, however, companies are more likely to have the knowledge and skills essential to respond competently to the complexity frequently encountered in NPD projects. In this paper, we first define complexity in NPD and then examine organizational learning as it can assist in dealing with development complexity. Next, we report findings from an exploratory research study on organizational learning and its relationship to product development complexity. The study is based on 32 field interviews with NPD participants regarding their learning experiences in dealing with complexity; the transfer of project learning to other projects; and the factors that minimize/block the transfer of learning among projects. Based on our research, we advance several suggestions for implementing a learning organization designed specifically to capitalize on the experiences of development firms' efforts in dealing with complexity and its consequences.

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