Early supplier involvement in new product development. A literature review

This work aims at delineating the state of art of the scientific literature related to New Product Development and Supplier Involvement. This project would like to provide a structured view of what has been published, with the final purpose of identifying the main topics and trends. Many topics about NPD and ESI are object of high interest and they are also a significant part of the literature, such as trust, collaboration and efficiency. The literature review has shown and increasing interest in the analysis of NPD and ESI topics from a relational point of view. The topic of Supplier Integration is very wide and it has received a lot of attention in the literature. The is an increasing attention about the supply network even though remaining a dyadic focus (Johnsen, T. 2009). Even if there are some emerging streams of research into different types of inter-organizational networks, few studies have considered the role of wider supply networks on innovation (Johnsen, T. 2009). The objectives faced within the research work aim at providing a complete view of NPD literature review. Doing so, it is possible to deeply understand the state of art of scientific researches, trends and hot topics that will characterise it. ✓ Objective n. 1: Delineate the state of art of the Literature for NPD highlighting the frequency and the evolution of the number of publications related to each topic. ✓ Objective n. 2: Evaluate and provide specific characteristics of the literature of NPD through an analysis of the contents. The best research type to evaluate and develop an exploration of literature contents is indeed the literature review. The developed findings were related to research objectives and they were obtained thanks to the explorative analysis conducted on the database. This research study has presented the results of a structured literature review about NPD and ESI in the temporal horizon that goes from 1990-2016, focusing in the 2000s. The developed literature review has shown how the interest towards NPD and ESI is constantly increasing. Moreover, it has been observed that this discipline is going through a phase of full development relatively to the research cycle. Other studies like the one developed by Giunipero observed that the supply chain management entered the phase of maturity in 2006.