Involving Suppliers in New Product Development: An Analysis of Spanish Firms

Abstract

This paper analyses the collaboration with suppliers in the process of new product development. It contains a description of the benefits and challenges this collaboration poses and shows the experience of Spanish industry regarding such a practice. From this experience, one may conclude that collaborating with the suppliers in the development of new products leads to shorter and more efficient innovative processes and to better products, but one can also observe that Spanish firms are still in the learning stage. As a result, lessons learned are presented as a guide to managers in improving collaboration with suppliers in the innovation process.