Antecedents and Consequences of Knowledge Integration in Product Development: An Empirical Evidence

The purpose of this paper is to explain product development performance through the link between knowledge management and knowledge integration. When product development teams integrate knowledge about two external entities -customers and suppliers, they acquire a better understanding of the market and of each other´s needs and capabilities, which enables them to operate and innovate better than their competitors. In this context, our theoretical framework focuses on the social enablers usually associated to knowledge management, and combine them with knowledge integration as to determine product development performance.