Management of new product development process: the explorative empirical research of the GeCo observatory

New Product Development (NPD) process has assumed a critical role in the modern global competition. Managing NPD process efficiently and effectively is more and more important for the success of the whole company. Many approaches, methods and tools have been created in the last 50 years for supporting this work, but how they are used, known and applied by the companies is still not clear. The general feeling is that there is a relevant gap between the literature theory and the industrial practice. The research initiative presented in this paper (GeCo Observatory) aims to conduct an empirical research for giving some real numbers to this gap. The paper presents the first results collected so far, introducing the reference framework developed by the authors for their analysis.