Creative process engagement and new product performance

This paper aims at investigating the processes underlying the relationship between creative process engagement (CPE) and new product performance. Drawing on the literature of new product development and creativity, we hypothesize that new product development (NPD) speed mediates the relationship between CPE and new product performance and that leader encouragement for creativity moderates this mediating model. Using a sample of 245 companies in China, we found that (1) not all components of CPE are positively related to new product performance. Specifically, except problem identification(PI), information search and encoding(ISE) and idea generation(IG) are respectively and positively related to new product performance; (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; and (3) leader encouragement for creativity positively moderates the relationship of PI and NPD speed, as well as the r...