Managing program impacts in new product development: An exploratory case study on overcoming uncertainties

• Collective sensemaking enables understanding and extending program impacts.
• Financial and non-financial impacts are made collectively by the program personnel.
• Collective sensemaking helps defining and overcoming uncertainties & ambiguities.
• The qualitative study relies on in-depth access to a large-scale NPD program.

New product development (NPD) programs are designed to implement innovation strategies in a coordinated way. Managing program impacts in a multi-project setting is insufficiently covered in research and increasingly challenging in practice. This paper explores program impact management practice. The paper focuses on NPD program impact management as a joint effort where program stakeholders collectively identify, make sense of and overcome uncertainties and ambiguities to create and enhance the program impact. The qualitative study relies on in-depth access to a large-scale NPD program in the machine manufacturing industry. The results show that program impact includes several financial and non-financial aspects and is made jointly and separately by the program organization, thus involving different uncertainties and ambiguities. Through collective sensemaking, knowledge about the program impacts may be strengthened, and the impacts may be extended beyond immediate benefits.