In today’s dynamic marketplace, manufacturing
companies are under strong pressure to introduce new products for
long-term survival with their competitors. Nevertheless, every company
cannot cope up progressively or immediately with the market requirements
due to knowledge dynamics being experienced in the competitive milieu.
Increased competition and reduced product life cycles put force upon
companies to develop new products faster. In response to these pressing
needs, there should be some new approach compatible in flexible
circumstances. This paper presents a solution based on the popular
Stage-Gate system, which is closely linked with virtual team approach.
Virtual teams can provide a platform to advance the knowledge-base in a
company and thus to reduce time-to-market. This article introduces
conceptual product development architecture under a virtual team
umbrella. The paper describes all the major aspects of new product
development (NPD), NPD process and its relationship with virtual teams,
Stage-Gate system finally presents a modified Stage-Gate system to cope
up with the changing needs. It also provides the guidelines for the
successful implementation of virtual teams in new product development.