New Product Development in Malaysia: Does Organizational Background Really Matter?

New Product Development (NPD) is vital in assisting Research and Development (R D) based organizations to adapt to the changes in markets and technology for competitive advantage. Ensuring the success of new products and optimization of new product performance is critical and essential for Research and Development based organizations. Hence, this study is carried out to explore does organizational background in term of company’s ownership (i.e. local or multinational companies) and operational scales (i.e. number of Research and Development staffs) affect NPD performance of Research and Development companies in Malaysia. In line with this, 8 New Product Development performance attributes were identified from literature review. These attributes were subsequently formulated into a survey questionnaire and responded by 186 respondents. Thereafter, the effect of organizational ownership and operational scale toward NPD performance are examined separately via Independent Sample t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Finding from the study revealed that the level of NPD performance in multinational R D companies is higher than local R D companies. Findings from this research also implied that NPD performance can be further improved by increasing number of R D staffs.