The purpose of this paper is to investigate the processes underlying the relationship between creativity processes and new product performance. Drawing on the literature of new product development (NPD) and organizational creativity, we hypothesize that NPD speed mediates the relationship between creativity processes and new product performance and that encouragement by leadership moderates this mediating model. Using a sample of 245 companies in China, we found that (1) not all components of creativity processes related positively to new product performance. Specifically, information search and encoding (ISE) and idea and alternative generation (IG) are respectively and positively related to new product performance, but problem identification (PI) is not. (2) NPD speed fully mediates the influence of PI and ISE on new product performance, but it only partially mediates the relationship between IG and new product performance. (3) Encouragement by leadership positively moderates the relationship of PI and NPD speed, as well as the relationship of ISE and NPD speed; however, it does not significantly moderate the relationship between IG and NPD speed. The implications of these findings and directions for future research in NPD performance are discussed.

Introduction

To remain competitive, firms need to provide a constant stream of new products and quickly deliver innovative products to the market while controlling costs (Allocca & Kessler, 2006; Carbonell & Rodriguez, 2006; Farid, Hakimian, Ismail, & Nair, 2017; Goktan & Miles, 2012). New product development (NPD) literature has focused on the NPD process, which starts from generating new ideas to commercializing new products, and proclaimed that new product innovativeness and NPD speed (the pace of progress that a firm displays in this process) are unequivocally important to new product performance (Chen, Reilly, & Lynn, 2012; Kessler & Bierly, 2002; Knockaert & Spithoven, 2014). However, the influences on NPD performance are quite complex. The relationship between new product innovativeness and NPD speed still has room for development (Kessler & Bierly, 2002; Wu, Liu, & Zhang, 2016). For example, are different tasks in the process of engaging creativity, which is crucial for new product innovativeness, equally associated with NPD speed? If not, how exactly do firms manage the NPD process by balancing creativity and speed to increase new product performance?