Challenges of managing the development of breakthrough products in Japan

We propose a contingency model and hypothesize that increases in product innovativeness weaken the influence of product synergies and development proficiencies on product performance. We incorporate these hypotheses in a path model linking measures of product synergy, development proficiency, product competitive advantage, and product performance. We test the model using data from Japan on 412 high-innovativeness projects and 375 low-innovativeness projects. We find that product innovativeness weakens three key relationships that determine new product success: (i) the impact of technical synergy on technical proficiency, (ii) the impact of technical proficiency on product competitive advantage, and (iii) the impact of product competitive advantage on new product success