Knowledge management in new product teams: practices and outcomes

This paper explores the critical practices impacting a new product team's ability to learn and succeed. By investigating the practices of 281 new product teams from around the world, several factors emerged that impact a team's ability to acquire and use knowledge to reduce cycle time and improve their probability of success. The significant factors include: 1) documentation of project information, 2) storage and retrieval systems for project information, 3) information reviewing practices, 4) vision clarity, 5) vision stability, and 6) management support of the project.