Firm ownership and the determinants of success and failure in new product development: an empirical study of manufacturing firms in the Guandong province of china.

This paper generates a newperspective on the growing literature in newproduct development (NPD): firmownership and the determinants of success and failure ofNPDfirms operating in a Chinese region which has experienced unprecedented change. Cooper and Kleinschmidt’s conceptual framework is utilised. 126 new product projects, from 84 firmswere investigated using a structured survey. Results are compared with those from studies in Canada, Korea, Japan and Slovenia. Contrary to other studies’ findings, a hostile market environment was found to be facilitative rather than a major de-facilitator. We then further examined NPD activities in three different types of manufacturing firms in Guangdong: state-owned, joint venture/foreign owned and private firms. A comparison with an earlier study conducted in China focusing mainly on state-owned firms is made and the paper concludes by drawing out implications for managers operating in China