EU Community Initiative INTERREG IIIC

Individual cooperation project: NPD-NET

Component 3

NPD Demand Side Survey

Stage D3: Questionnaire for the Demand of NPD Services

(Version December 2004)

Prepared by

URENIO Research Unit

December 2004

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Preparation by URENIO Research Unit (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)

1. Company profile

Company Name:
Legal Status:
Sector:
Main products
Address:
Tel.-fax :
Contact E-mail
Company size / Number of employees
Approx. turnover (€)
Person who provides this information
Position in company
Date of interview
Short company profile / (May be provided in printed version)

2. Innovation indicators

2.1. Percentage of turnover invested in R&D activities (average in the last three years).
2.2. Number of patents submitted to the European Patent Office (EPO) in the last three years
2.3. Number of patents submitted to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in the last three years.
2.4. Sales of ‘new to market’ products (% of turnover) (last year)
2.5. Sales of ‘new to the firm but not new to the market’ products in manufacturing (% of turnover) (last year)
2.6. How many new products have you developed in the last 3 years?
2.7. Percentage of sales of New Products in total
2.8. Dedicated personnel for R&D (% of total. Structure of NPD team if not connected to R&D

3. Activity in R&D (Internal and external business environment analysis)

3.1. What are the main trends in the market and of your business environment in which your company is activated?
3.2. Define the range of radical or incremental NPD projects (you may relate this to the number of stages followed from the roadmap).
3.3. What the company considers as new product (Consider NPD as a full process from the idea generation to market insertion or a process which includes most of the typical NPD stages– see roadmap)
3.4. Relation between R&D and NPD

4. Resources for NPD

4.1. What percentage of your company turnover does your company invest in R&D activities during the last two years? Is R&D related to the company strategy and how?
4.3. Internal – external effort for the Development of New Products (%)

5. Cooperation for NPD

5.1. Describe the range of cooperation with R&D and Technology Institutes. How satisfied you are? If you do not cooperate what is the reason for this?
5.2. Describe the range of Market search/watch processes you implement (is that structured?). Describe the range of competition watch you do
5.3. Describe the range of international cooperation you. In what field. What are the results?
5.4. In terms of your company’s experience in NPD could you comment on your level of satisfaction from the support provided by
1: very satisfactory
2: rather satisfactory
3: rather unsatisfactory
4: neither satisfactory nor unsatisfactory
5: DK/NA
Chambers of Commerce 1 2 3 4 5
Banks 1 2 3 4 5
Accountants 1 2 3 4 5
Professional associations 1 2 3 4 5
Trade Unions 1 2 3 4 5
National bodies granting patents 1 2 3 4 5
National and regional development authorities 1 2 3 4 5
Technology intermediary organizations 1 2 3 4 5
Consultants 1 2 3 4 5
Research institutes 1 2 3 4 5

6. Problems in NPD process

6.1. Describe the main problems/issues that you have encountered in developing new products (e.g. lack of R&D personnel, costs of developing product, getting the product to market etc.)
Have you experienced NPD failures?
6.2. Describe the most important unsatisfied needs in terms of R&D in your company
A.  Finding or mobilising human resources
B.  Accessing innovative customers and/or markets
C.  Finding or using new technologies
D.  Finding or mobilising financial resources
E.  Knowledge sharing or networking
F.  Protecting your knowledge
G.  [DON’T READ OUT none of these, but this one is]: [SPECIFY]
H.  h) [DON’T READ OUT no need more important than the other]
I.  i) (DK/NA)………………………………………………………………
Comment
6.3. Describe the most important unsatisfied needs related to R&D, innovation and NPD in your region (if different from the above.
What is the measure followed in that case?
o  Avoid the NPD process (reluctance of fear)
o  Organise the process by a reengineering process or hire new personnel (do it internally)
o  Seek for outsourcing from other companies (do it externally but locally)
o  Consider the possibility of outsourcing the project abroad if that means better service (do it externally anyhow)
Comment

7. Incentives for NPD

Which factors provide the strongest incentive for your company to innovate
A.  Response to customer needs
B.  Increasing price competition
C.  Increasing product competition
D.  Compliance with new regulatory/legislative measures
Comments:

8. New Product Development Process

Describe the process you used to develop your last product (or a recent product)
o  Did you need to use a specific method to generate the initial idea?
o  Which tools/methods have you used to turn the idea into a product?
o  How did you evaluate the idea?
o  Did you develop a prototype (or market test it) before launching it?
o  Did you use external or internal resources? Which external resources did you use (Universities, consultants etc)?
o  Which public/intermediary institutions supported the company and what was your opinion of that support?
o  What did you do well/what are your NPD strengths?
Methodology

·  The above questionnaire is not a single part of a survey process. The issues raised are the chapters expected to be analysed in your deliverable report. The content of replies is very important but it is expected to be completed by the interviewer and not the company representatives.

·  Each partner will select a representative sample of companies from the project-selected sectors according to specific criteria (for example size of companies, number of people employed, turnover, legal status, age of companies, location, existence of NPD skills).

·  Each partner is responsible to select the size of the sample or the questionnaire dissemination process (sent to the companies via ordinary mail or email or interviews with selected companies).

·  We expect all partners to keep us informed about the interview process before ending it. Sending the first 5 questionnaires to us could help do some possible interventions in the process so as to achieve the most possible common look in the final deliverable of all partners

Output

·  After getting the feedback from companies, all partners will process questionnaire data collected so as to get the companies’ real interest and the prospective of our planned NPD Support Centers.

·  This analysis consists of detailed elaboration of the completed questionnaires.

·  This process will produce the first-hand focused information about the NPD skills demand side in NPD-NET sectors and regions.

·  After completing the data analysis and taking into consideration the information collected and elaborated each partner will prepare a short report with a SWOT analysis about the NPD demand side.

·  The SWOT analysis may also include identification of the manufacturing sectors with exceptional number of companies which possibly justify cluster based support for NPD.

·  It may also include identification of potential opportunities for expertise exchange between regions based on characteristics and sizes of sectors. For instance, a region with a strong metal manufacturing sector tends to export mostly intermediate products because there is weak local Product Design sector to support the development of finished products.

Deliverable

The expected deliverable to the Lead Partner is the following:

§  The minutes of all interviews in electronic form (soon we’ll process a way for you to submit it is an organised way.

§  Some statistical Analysis for the total sample of questionnaires coming from the questions existing

§  The regional report including a SWOT analysis for R&D and NPD in the regional markets based on the results of the interviews process

GOOD LUCK

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Preparation by URENIO Research Unit (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)