Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Industrial Marketing Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/indmarman Research Paper The drivers of success in new-product development Robert G. Cooper a,b, ⁎ a Penn State University's Smeal College of Business Administration, USA b DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada ABSTRACT Why are some new products so successful and some companies outstanding performers in new-product development? The article identifies success factors from numerous research studies into NPD (new-product development) performance in industry. Three categories of success drivers have been defined. First, success drivers, that explain the success of individual new-product projects, are more tactical: They capture the characteristics of new product projects, such as certain executional best practices (building in voice-of-customer; doing the front-end homework; and adopting a global orientation for the project), and well as the nature of the product itself (a compelling value proposition, for example). A second category is drivers of success at the business level: They include organizational and strategic factors, such as the business's innovation strategy and how the firm makes its R&D investment decisions; how it organizes for NPD; climate and culture; and leadership The third category of success divers identified is the systems and methods the firm has in place for managing NPD, for example gating systems, Agile development approaches, and ideation methods. The details of each of these 20 success drivers, along with their managerial implications, are outlined in the article. 1. In search of the success What are the factors that underlie new-product success? And why are some new products so successful and some companies such out- standing performers in product development? The answer is complex, and certainly elusive for many – witness the high failure rates of new products and the poor innovation performance in industry: About 40% of new products are estimated to fail at launch, even after all the de- velopment and testing work; out of every 7 to 10 new-product concepts, only one is a commercial success; and only 13% of firms report that their total new product efforts achieve their annual profit objectives (Cooper, 2017b; Cooper, Edgett, & Kleinschmidt, 2004). Wide variances exist around these and other performance statistics, however, with the best performers doing dramatically better than the rest. This begs the question…why? 2. The scope and focus of this article The current article and review is based largely on data from the world of physical or manufactured new products (NPD). While new service development (NSD) and software development are obviously important sectors, the fact that in the U.S. manufacturers account for 70% of R&D spending, means that NPD (physical products) is very much a vital area (NSF, National Science Foundation, 2014). Some of the success factors or drivers, and some of the best practices, outlined in the current article also have applicability to these other two sectors, namely to software and service developments; but not all do, nor are the relative impacts quite the same. Note that results are obtained from studies of both B2B and B2C firms, and across many industries within each category. While the methods, approaches, and tools used for the conception, development, testing, and launch of B2B and B2C products differ, there is no hard and consistent evidence that the main success factors are significantly dif- ferent by industry or sector. For example, it's important to have an innovation strategy, do solid voice-of-customer research, and put to- gether effective cross-functional teams, regardless of the industry one is in. In short, the factors that make new products successful are fairly universal across industries. The article identifies success factors from numerous research studies into NPD (new-product development) performance in industry. The impetus for this current article was a look back at two articles on this topic written thirty years ago which appeared in this journal, and which have been widely cited over the years – it is time for an update (Cooper, 1988; Cooper & Kleinschmidt, 1987). Some of the most revealing in- vestigations on success drivers have been the large-sample quantitative studies of winning versus failed new products (for reviews, see Cooper, 2018, 2017a, 2013a; Montoya-Weiss & Calantone, 1994). This long series of product studies began with Project SAPPHO in the early 1970s, followed by the NewProd series of studies, and the Stanford Innovation Project, and subsequently, studies in countries outside of North America and Europe (Mishra, Kim, & Lee, 1996; Song & Parry, 1996). Ad- ditionally, several large benchmarking studies of best practices within firms have provided other insights into how to succeed at product in- novation (APQC, 2003; Cooper & Edgett, 2012). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2018.07.005 Received 18 January 2018; Received in revised form 2 July 2018; Accepted 11 July 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author at: 48 Brant Street, Oakville, ON L6K 2Z4, Canada. E-mail address: robertcooper675@gmail.com. Industrial Marketing Management xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0019-8501/ © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Cooper, R.G., Industrial Marketing Management (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2018.07.005