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This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Editor's Note: MIT Sloan Management Review first published "The New Practice of Global Product Development"in our Summer 2006 edition. In the article, authors Steven D. Eppinger and Anil R. Chitkara examined state-of-the-art and emerging best practices in global product development (GPD). GPD continues to evolve, and in 2009, we asked Eppinger, the General Motors Leaders for Manufacturing Professor of Management Science at the MIT Sloan School of Management, to update the article with new insights about GPD. His additions are published here along side the 2006 article, annotating the original text.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Many manufacturers already have established product development activities in different countries around the world. As a rule, the current approach includes colocation of cross-functional teams to foster close collaboration among engineering, marketing, manufacturing, and supply-chain functions. The results to date--better product designs, faster time to market, and lower-cost production--have been satisfactory. However, growth and innovation can now be much more effective if manufacturers tie their decentralized development organizations into a cohesive, unified global product development (GPD) operation. In this article, the authors introduce new empirical frameworks to guide managers toward such practices. Citing exemplars such as Hewlett-Packard, Eastman Kodak, Hyundai Motors, Haier, Alcatel, and Cummins, the authors explain why GPD has come of age and demonstrate a three-stage approach that puts product development in the context of a company's relationships with outside partners. The article draws from extensive interviews with engineering managers at more than 100 companies in 15 countries in North America, Europe, and Asia. Additional data are from a recently completed study on GPD that PTC has conducted with BusinessWeek Research Services, interviewing and surveying more than 1,100 engineering managers worldwide.