Familiarity and competence diversity in new product development teams: Effects on new product performance

When developing new products, most firms use cross-functional teams, but research on the effect of functional diversity on new product performance returns heterogeneous results. We propose a measure of competence diversity that is more comprehensive than the common functional diversity proxy. Empirical findings, based on a survey of 142 product and sales managers, support the improved predictive validity of our scale. We further observe a mediating effect of the instrumental use of information in the competence diversity–new product performance relationship. Finally, we discuss the moderating effect of familiarity among team members on the relationship between competence diversity and the instrumental use of information.