The Handbook of Behavioral Operations

10New Product Development and Project Management Decisions

Yael Grushka‐Cockayne¹, Sanjiv Erat², and Joel Wooten³

¹ Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

² Rady School of Management, University of California‐San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

³ Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

In this chapter, we take an operations perspective on the processes of creativity, innovation, design, new product development, and project planning and execution. We offer a descriptive view of the main human, or behavioral, tendencies documented in this area. We discuss how these behavioral tendencies have been studied and how they have been shown to influence decision‐making throughout the processes of creativity, design, innovation, and, by implication, the performance in new product development and projects. Whenever possible, we compare existing normative theory with the descriptive observations and generate prescriptive recommendations.

Research in operations management has traditionally focused on areas of manufacturing, services, and supply chain. In such environments, normative theory has evolved to consider objectives such as maximizing profit, efficiency, throughput, and so on. In these areas, normative theory has been compared with the demonstrated behavior of agents in lab settings and beyond (Gino and Pisano 2008; Croson et al. 2013).

Today, as companies constantly seek ways to innovate, organically grow, and stay ...