研發網絡與新產品上市時間

Network Relationship and Time-to-market of New Product Development

探討新產品上市時間的文獻，多限定廠商的專長相似，及產品不分模組，因而多認為獨立研發，才是使新產品上市時間最快的網絡。在研發合作與競爭的文獻，雖然有討論多模組的產品，但卻忽略聯盟形成過程所造成的研發延遲，因而普遍認為合作研發優於獨立研發。本文同時納入多模組產品與聯盟有研發延遲兩個要素，探討使新產品預期上市時間最快的網絡，是否仍是所有廠商都獨立研發？在兩個模組的架構下，若不考慮研發延遲，當兩個模組的技術有相當程度的不同時，本文結果為互補混合結構或產業聯盟，為預期上市時間最快的網絡。反之，只要產業聯盟的研發延遲，較互補聯盟超過一些，縱然其在研發階段發揮很高的效率，產業聯盟仍不是上市時間最快的網絡。

Past literatures comparing time-to-market of various networks, commonly assume all firms in an industry have similar expertise and a product contains only one module. And those assumptions leading to the conclusion that all firms developing a new product independently have shortest time-to-market among all types of network. Past studies also assumed an alliance can be formed promptly and its new product developing work can be started right away. Usually many products comprise several heterogeneous modules, and the formation of alliance takes times so there have formation-delay in starting new product development. After taking into account those two factors, this paper wants to study whether all firms develop independently is still the network with shortest time-to-market among all types of network? This paper finds that without considering formation-delay of an alliance, when the technological difference of those two modules is large, on average, consortium is the network bringing product to market with fastest speed among all types of network. However, when the formation-delay of consortium is over some length, then all firms developing independently or a network containing complementary alliance have shortest time-to-market.