Factors influencing co-design adoption: drivers and internal consistency

As customers ask for increasing levels of performance, functionality and customisation, firms rely on suppliers not only as a source of components, but also as a source of innovation. Several researchers have investigated the adoption of co-design, its potential benefits and its costs. Recently, scholars have increasingly underlined the need for bringing this rich stream of studies within a contingency framework, taking into account context variables and internal characteristics of the firm. This paper contributes to this contingency theory of co-design adoption. We investigate the role of three factors that might influence the intensity of supplier involvement in product development: structural characteristics (industry, size and degree of vertical integration), strategic priorities (strategic rio and internal consistency with purchasing and new product development practices. An empirical analysis of 67 Italian manufacturers demonstrates that co-design adoption is actually related to most of these factors.