Selecting influential business-to-business customers in new product development: Relational embeddedness and knowledge heterogeneity considerations

An analysis of how the most influential business-to-business (B2B) customers involved in providing input to a new product development (NPD) project influence new product advantage. These customers provided NPD projects with a diversity of perspectives, competencies and experiences that fostered significant product innovations. A high degree of knowledge homogeneity tended to enhance new product performance. New product development managers face a difficult challenge in deciding which customers to involve in projects while being under the tremendous pressure to release products faster with higher quality and more differentiation.