An Empirical Study: The Impact of Collaborative Communications on New Product Creativity That Contributes to New Product Performance

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper examines the impact of different collaborative communication tools and use of ICT on new product creativity as well as its impact in conjunction with some control variables on new product performance in a manufacturing firm.

Although the research context is valid and of value to explore, the explanation in the contention on pg 2, lines 60-66, and the words used skew the context in which these are stated. For example, in the statement “that has drawn more researchers’ attention to further investigate what drives new product creativity and if new product creativity guarantees new product performance for organizations”, the use of the word “guarantee” in line 66 is unwise, since by its very nature no new product creativity can ever “guarantee” new product performance. On pg 4 line 117 the authors have further stated “Nevertheless, mixed results were found as new products do not always guarantee success”. This in fact contradicts the earlier claim. Therefore, it is suggested that the word “guarantee” in line 66 be changed to “can assure”, which is more appropriate.

Pg 4 line 118 “According to Tu (2010), he stated that new product creativity offers no benefits to product quality, hence new product performance cannot be achieved” is a repeat from pg 2, line 60. Repetitions must be avoided. This statement must be re-worded.

Pg 2 line 122, “as Figure 1 below” change to “as shown in Figure 1 below”.

Although the hypotheses development is well explained for each of the elements, but why these elements comprise the conceptual framework is not explained. The conceptual framework development requires elaboration.

Pg 7 lines 240-245, stating control variables for new product performance are identified based on “on my working experience in the industry including many inputs from the top management in the company and experts in the industry”. Instead of personal and professional reasons, academically valid reasons must be used for inclusion of control variables in the conceptual model.

The research methodology does not state how many interviews were conducted, the nature of these interviews, criteria for selection of the company and participants, and sample size for the questionnaire survey in the methodology section. This section must be strengthened with pertinent information.

English grammar needs improvement. “I” and “my” has been used in many places in the paper. Since there are two authors of this paper, “I” and “my” do not apply here and such pronouns must be avoided. For example, Pg 1, Line 17 in the Abstract – “my” findings indicated should be “our”. “Through my working experience with many NDP team members, many novel ideas and concepts were generated…”  Pg 15, lines 557-559.

Page 15, line 563, standard of procedure (SOP) should be “standard operating procedure”.

The discussion of results has several speculating contentions from one author rather than justifications based on findings/literature support e.g., pg 15 line 572 “I suppose formal communication has become more a routine” or pg 15 line 589 “I reckon investigation should be made” etc. These must be re-worded to avoid personal speculations rather include author critique and justification.

Adoption of resource-based view is stated in the abstract line 13 and conclusion line 611, with no mention of this theoretical framework throughout the paper nor any connection to achieving sustainable competitiveness. No referencing/citation. So how this is applied is not clear. Application of resource-based view framework with citation must be clearly demonstrated in the paper.

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript titled An Empirical Study: The Impact of Collaborative Communications on New Product Creativity That Contributes to New Product Performance appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers. We have highlighted the changes within the manuscript.

Please refer to the Word file as attached.

We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to responding to any further questions and comments you may have.

Thank you very much!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

 

Thanks for giving me such opportunity to review a paper entitled " An Empirical Study: The Impact of Collaborative Communications on New Product Creativity That Contributes to New

Product Performance ", submitted to sustainability journal

 

 

There are several merits in this paper, however there are issues in its literature review, design and methodology, therefore, I recommend revising the current version as below.  

 

• The design and format of the paper is inconsistent, please revise.
• I can not find the sample size and its justification.
• The measurement section needs to be revised and be in one section not several sections
• My main concern, is that the author employed SEM with no GOF indices, please provide the goodness of fit criteria to show model fit to data
• Please provide the AMOS output results to show the measurement model and the structural model.
• Please justify how you measured the moderating effects.
• Please try to rewrite the manuscript to fit the journal scientific standard, design, and criteria.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript titled An Empirical Study: The Impact of Collaborative Communications on New Product Creativity That Contributes to New Product Performance appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers. We have highlighted the changes within the manuscript.

Please refer to the Word file as attached.

We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to responding to any further questions and comments you may have.

Thank you very much

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This is an interesting paper focusing on an area where there is need for more knowledge. The content of the article corresponds to its aim - substantive compatibility in theoretical, methodological and empirical terms. The research aim of the study has been achieved. The results of the analysis are well presented. However, the paper needs some improvement.

Some comments:

Both Abstract and Introduction lack clear statement of the aim of the research. I suggest to clearly emphasize the aim of the manuscript both in the abstract and the Introduction section. I also invite the authors to supplement Introduction with the information about the significance of the study. You could provide the information about: Why is this review important in light of all other existing and recent reviews? How is this review different from the other existing ones? What kind of use you envisage for the study results?

The section regarding hypotheses development (2.1) lacks explanation of “new product creativity”. Given that the hypothesis relate to “new product creativity”, the authors should define what he/she means by this term. I understand that it refers to novelty and meaningfulness of new products, but this is not clear from the text. There should be also literature sources provided in terms of this explanation.

Furthermore, while describing Research Methodology (section 3) the author writes: “To measure all the constructs in the model, I conducted both face-to-face interviews and mass survey for questionnaire verification and mass data collection”. First of all, who were these face-to-face interviewees? There is no explanation regarding the criteria to choose particular people (experts) consulting the questionnaire content. Who are they? Why did you choose them for the research? Please provide more detailed justification of this choice

Also, in the sentence: “In addition, all items for measuring the constructs were adopted from prior studies” (line 295), the author should provide the references for these studies. I know it is done later but in my opinion you should mention particular researchers here or write that more detailed explanation is in the further part of the section.

As far as the research sample is concerned, I understand that the respondents were the representatives of one big company. The authors say: “…respondents were the senior management teams in R&D, Marketing and Sales of a large multinational consumer electronics company. This company is a public company listed on the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong, its business model involves in design, develop, manufacture, and distribute power tools and equipment globally. As one of the top HK-based manufacturers and has multiple regional offices around the world” (lines 303-308). This should be underlined as a limitation of the conducted study in Conclusion section. - the author indicates some dependencies based on the opinions of representatives of one company.

Moreover, while presenting Research Methodology, the is no information provided on the validation of the questionnaire used for the research. How was it validated? Was there any pilot study conducted etc.? Please provide some information about it.

Conclusions section should be supplemented with the paragraph regarding the limitations of the conducted study as well as further research avenues.

I do not understand why in the text there are entries in the first person "I", in a situation where there are 2 authors of the text. Please, correct this.

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript titled An Empirical Study: The Impact of Collaborative Communications on New Product Creativity That Contributes to New Product Performance appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers. We have highlighted the changes within the manuscript.

Please refer to the Word file as attached.

We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to responding to any further questions and comments you may have.

Thank you very much

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors!

I see that this work is a result of a hard work. There are some issues which need to be fixed. Check the attached file.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript titled An Empirical Study: The Impact of Collaborative Communications on New Product Creativity That Contributes to New Product Performance appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers. We have highlighted the changes within the manuscript.

Please refer to the Word file as attached.

We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to responding to any further questions and comments you may have.

Thank you very much

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

An Empirical Study: The Impact of Collaborative Communications on New Product Creativity That Contributes to New Product Performance

Review Feedback

Line 169 – change “the company,” to “a company;”.

Line 170 – change “were” to “are”.

Line 170 - change “not sure” to “no surety”.

Line 178 – remove sentence break after “interaction”.

Lines 193-194 – “because of the inconsistent findings from the NPD literature, we reckon the relationship between new product development, creativity and collaboration and whether collaboration and creativity are key at new product development to achieve new product performance”. First, this sentence is incomplete. Second, the grammar is incorrect – “key at new product development” should be “key in new product development”. Third, what are the inconsistent findings in literature in this sentence is not clearly stated? For example, it has not been highlighted in the paper that literature suggests collaboration and creativity are not key in new product development to achieve new product performance. So, what is it that the paper is trying to prove is not clear? To explore the underlying factors that may affect new product creativity and their contribution to new product performance is fine as sometimes new creativity can lead to unsuccessful results but stating the justification for this study as “inconsistent findings in literature” is not clear.

Line 1343 – Response letter sates the content is changed to “according the literature review, formal communication has become more a routine status update” however the paper still shows “we suppose formal communication has become more a routine status update”.

Overall, too many grammatical errors to compile/highlight for improvement. Extensive editing of English language was recommended last time, but this is not done. The paper still includes "I" (e.g., line 457). Although some sections are improved with additional material, overall readability is very poor.

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript titled An Empirical Study: The Impact of Collaborative Communications on New Product Creativity That Contributes to New Product Performance appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers.Thank you for your time, and understanding. Your recognition is highly appreciated. We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to responding to any further questions and comments you may have.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

well done, only one more request 

Please add the discriminant and convergent validity tests including the AVE, CR, MSV values. 

best regards

 

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript titled An Empirical Study: The Impact of Collaborative Communications on New Product Creativity That Contributes to New Product Performance appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers. Thank you for your time, and understanding. Your recognition is highly appreciated. We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to responding to any further questions and comments you may have.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The Authors complied with all my suggestions and remarks. I am satisfied with the revisions they have made in the manuscript. 

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript titled An Empirical Study: The Impact of Collaborative Communications on New Product Creativity That Contributes to New Product Performance appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers. Thank you for your time, and understanding. Your recognition is highly appreciated. We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to responding to any further questions and comments you may have.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors,

The following part is included in your cover letter:

"Third, since few collaborative communication dimensions confirm their associations with new product creativity and only the meaningfulness of new product creativity contributes to new product performance; cross-functional integration as the control variable demonstrates its significant impact upon the meaningfulness and novelty of new product creativity, as well as new product performance. we reckon future study should consider including cross-functional integration as an independent variable to combine with the collaborative communication dimensions so as to verify their interactive impacts on new product creativity and new product performance as a whole.

 

Fourth, it is really important to consider the emotional intelligence on knowledge sharing. The study of Mura et al. (2021) ³states: “Employees of the company do not share their knowledge to remain irreplaceable and would not like to benefit other employees.” “Managers need to figure out how to persuade their employees to share their knowledge.” According to their results, the level of emotional intelligence influences the willingness to share knowledge. It would have been interesting to explore this aspect."

however it is MISSING from the actual uploaded article!

It should be included. I hope it is just a accidental and not intentional! It is misleading.

 

Other things:

A point is missing at the end of the sentence (Line 1299)

Line 1503 - the source "Amabile et al., 1996" should be added according to the template.

The numbers should not be in brackets in the References.

 

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript titled An Empirical Study: The Impact of Collaborative Communications on New Product Creativity That Contributes to New Product Performance appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers. Thank you for your time, and understanding. Your recognition is highly appreciated. We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to responding to any further questions and comments you may have.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Suggested improvements are incorporated.

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors!

 

From my side the article is okay. There are some formal issues (like numbers at the sources) but it should be done by the experts after the article is accepted.

All the best!