The role of top management team attention in new product introductions

Individuals in high technology organizations inhabit four different “thought worlds” that shape their perceptions of the problems and opportunities facing the organization. Field people, planning people, technical people, and manufacturing people all have different patterns of allocating their attention and prioritizing issues. We theorize that some executives on the top management team (TMT) reflect the cognitive patterns of the areas that they represent; thus the representation of these thought worlds on the TMT ultimately affects how and when new products are introduced. This perspective integrates the concept of organizational thought worlds with the attention-based view, and we find that field people increase the introduction of products to existing markets while planning people increase products introduced to new markets. Manufacturing and technical people decrease products introduced to new markets. These findings increase our understanding of how the composition of the TMT affects the organizational-wide process of new product development.