ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the principal organisational devices which it is possible to use in firms for managing product development tasks. The first two designs – New Venture Departments and New Venture Teams – have as their primary aim the pursuit of radical product innovation at the corporate level. Whilst the New Venture Group or Department is a highly centralised organisational device aimed at effecting radical product change, a less extreme mechanism is the New Product Department, the explicit task of which is to develop new products which can later be taken up by constituent parts of the firm. The decision whether or not to centralise or decentralise product innovation in a firm is, additionally, likely to be influenced by the type of organisational mechanisms with which the firm has historically felt happy. Having a separate New Products Department is generally considered least appropriate for incremental product innovations, which can be undertaken by existing business functions.
