Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/26946
Title: To learn or not to learn from new product development project failure: The roles of failure experience and error orientation
Authors: Tao, XT
Robson, PJA
Wang, CL
Keywords: learning from failure;innovation failure;error orientation;new product development;high-tech ventures
Issue Date: 4-Aug-2023
Publisher: Elsevier
Citation: Tao, X.T., Robson, P.J.A. and Wang, C.L. (2023) 'To learn or not to learn from new product development project failure: The roles of failure experience and error orientation', Technovation, 127, 102830, pp. 1 - 12. doi: 10.1016/j.technovation.2023.102830.
Abstract: Copyright © 2023 The Authors. New product development (NPD) project leaders' learning varies after experiencing project failure, as not all failure experience equally promotes learning and not all project leaders equally learn from failure. Drawing on the sensemaking and error management perspectives, this study focuses on two research questions: to what extent does project failure experience (i.e., the percentage of project failures in the overall project portfolio managed by a project leader and the time elapsed since last project failure) affect NPD project leaders' learning from failure? To what extent does a project leader's error orientation (i.e., error competence and error strain) moderate the effect of project failure experience on NPD project leaders' learning from failure? Based on survey responses collected at two distinct time points from 237 NPD project leaders in high-tech ventures, our results show that the percentage of project failures negatively affects learning from failure, and their negative relationship is weakened as error competence increases. In contrast, the time since project failure positively affects learning from failure, and their positive relationship is weakened as error strain increases. Our findings emphasize that a simplistic approach to learning from failure fails to uncover the transformative mechanisms involved in turning failure into learning in the NPD process. Instead, we suggest a customized approach to comprehending how project leaders can capitalize on project failure considering their failure experience and error orientation to learn from NPD project failure.
Description: Data availability: Data will be made available on request.
URI: https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/26946
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2023.102830
ISSN: 0166-4972
Other Identifiers: ORCID iD: Catherine L Wang https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4816-8462
102830
Appears in Collections:Brunel Business School Research Papers

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
FullText.pdfCopyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).1.36 MBAdobe PDFView/Open


This item is licensed under a Creative Commons License Creative Commons