Creativity Toolkit for New Product Development

In this, the twenty first century, innovation has become one of the most important and effective ways of obtaining and sustaining competitive dominance in the market place over the past number of years. Many firms are engaging cross-functional teams composed of individuals from a variety of functional areas to spearhead new product development. The aim of this paper is to examine the critical success factors involved in the area of creativity and knowledge communication within cross-functional product development in R&D departments. To facilitate this existing literature was reviewed and organisational case studies were conducted to understand the social and cultural contexts within which people in an R&D department of medical device and pharmaceutical companies work. Some of the key findings from the investigation included topics involving knowledge management, project management, employee selection and departmental systems.