A Stage Model for NPD Process Maturity and IKMS Implementation

The objective of this chapter is to provide an analytical tool to assist organizations in their implementations of intelligent knowledge management systems (IKMS) along the new product development (NPD) process. Indeed, organizations rely on a variety of systems using artificial intelligence to support the NPD process that depends on the maturity stage of both the process and type of knowledge managed. Our framework outlines the technological and organizational path that organizations have to follow to integrate and manage knowledge effectively along their new product development process. In doing so, we also address the main limitations of the systems used to date and suggest the evolution toward a new category of KMS based on artificial intelligence that we refer to as intelligent knowledge management systems. We illustrate our framework with an analysis of several case studies.