A cross-cultural study of Sino-American cooperation in new product development

Consumer demands have become more diversified and even sophisticated, which resulted in much shorter product life cycle and more intensive market competition across the world. New product development has become significant for companies to maintain their competitiveness. To ensure success in the current era of globalization, it is imperative for companies to understand new product development model of cooperators and competitors across national boundaries, in order to avoid the cultural conflict and integrate the cultural diversity. Based on the theoretical framework and case study of a cooperative NPD in a Sino-America JV, differences on new product development due to social and cultural differences is explored, and integration strategy and methods to utilize the potential complementation of the differences are discussed. This will give the reader some practical solutions and some ideas about how to exploit these potentials more efficiently.