Pages: 4

The issue of strategic outsourcing has recently become the focus of renewed academic interest and has increasingly come to bear on managerial practice. Decision-making on outsourcing new product development, such as engaging and managing the supply chain, is far from easy. It may involve addressing strategic and operational risks that might cause longer development times and increase innovations costs. The proposed model suggests a valuable approach to outsourcing the decision-making strategies for new product development when the innovation is driven by technological innovation. The printing process of this book began over a year ago. Therefore, some specific data are updated. Giuseppe Fabio is a young PhD graduate and expert in branding.

Pages: 38

The importance of cost economies in outsourcing decisions is largely based on the Transaction Cost Economic Theory, developed first by Coase and updated revised, almost fifty years later, by Williamson. Outsourcing is a growing phenomenon in industries where firms are mainly committed to redefining their operating model and updating competitive advantage through product innovation development involving intense collaborative relationships between buyers and suppliers. However, building and managing supplier relationships can be time-consuming, needing substantial relation-specific investments. It also requires the ability to select suppliers, define the goals of the outsourcing relationship and key performance indicators, and set up a system to measure them and distribute the benefits resulting from the outsourcing relationships. Innovations arising from the early involvement of suppliers vastly reduce time-to-market compared with home-grown efforts.

Pages: 22

The effects it can produce in terms of creative destruction and the ability to profoundly redefine the rules of competition for firms and customers are undoubtedly significant for even radically renewing ways of creating “value innovation”. The meaning of ‘innovation’ assumed in this study concerns research and development activities, especially production, focusing on new product development. Product innovation is linked to process innovation when the manufacturing and designing processes trigger breakthrough product innovation in which the use of innovative materials may also be a contributing factor. The environmental factors are the following: the uncertainty within which the transaction takes place among the economic actors involved; the frequency of the transactions or interactions among the actors; the investments in specific assets made by the actors involved in the transaction; the information asymmetries among the actors involved in the transaction, and the number of actors involved in the transaction.

Pages: 19

Decision-making involves analysing a finite set of alternatives described in terms of evaluative criteria. It helps to rank alternatives and/or select the best when all the criteria are considered simultaneously, together with their inter-related influences. The choice of activities to outsource along the value chain is one of the most important decisions a firm can make. Firstly, an activity might have various implications depending on its breadth. The activities along the value chain can be aggregated into three main blocks. The first is customer centred, focusing on acquiring, retaining, developing the customer base, and customer relationships management. Customer-centric culture lies at the core of these kinds of activities. Internal outsourcing entails organising the firm into business units under central but strategically and economically autonomous control. The reasoning behind the fourth phase may be the starting point for questioning the classification of outsourcing relationships.

Pages: 65

The research method adopted is a case study to answer the RQ at the heart of this book. A qualitative method allows effective data collection, which helps shed light on complex issues and enriches previous knowledge. The case study concerns the Boeing 787 Dreamliner programme, beginning in 2009 with the B787-8’s first model and continuing to track its evolution until more recent times through the B787-9 and B787-10 models. The commercial aircraft industry is an appropriate research setting for several reasons. Firstly, it is characterised by high-intensity technological innovation with multiple technology platforms supporting the design and manufacture of an aero-plane. The industry is hierarchically organised into four primary levels in the form of a pyramid.

Pages: 21

The key dimensions of decision-making in outsourcing, rooted in the theories of the firm discussed in the theoretical background to this work, form an integrated outsourcing framework where they are associated with one or more research propositions (RPs) found in the literature. In order to answer the RQ, a multidimensional and integrated decision-making model with six interacting key dimensions that affect the choice of whether to outsource NPD activities or keep them in-house has been empirically validated. Technological discontinuity affects the technological domain, namely the process technology on which the NPD project impacts. The literature relating to outsourcing strategies has never considered this decision-making dimension relevant, if not in terms of a derived dimension: technological uncertainty. The decision-making dimension and associated RP have their theoretical roots in the TCET framework. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner represents a technological discontinuity in terms of both product and process.

Pages: 7

The Boeing 787 programme is the most recent attempt to reshape the outsourcing model in the commercial aviation industry, changing the way prime contractors work with their supply chain. The new aircraft was designed to be a real market “game-changer” with major new features. Among these, improving the travel experience of the passengers with more comfort and non-stop flights between any two cities, creating value for the airlines with an unprecedented level of efficiency and reduced life-cycle maintenance costs. The partnership model modified the traditional relationships in the supply chain. Boeing was transformed from jet manufacturer to large-scale systems integrator, extensively outsourcing work packages – including all the major sections of the new airframe – to its globally located tier-1 suppliers. The market enthusiastically embraced the innovative features of the aircraft as well as the unconventional global supply partnership model.