Nowadays, cooperating in Product Development seems to be a dominant strategy to lower costs and risks, to fully utilize capacities, and to gain access to lacking knowledge assets.
Oppat analyzes cooperations in Product Development with a special focus on the automotive industry. He seeks answers to the question of how knowledge transfer between involved partners takes place. Although knowledge transfer and its success levers (e.g. absorptive capacity) are well-researched phenomena, equivalent investigations of the sender and her capabilities (DiC - Disseminative Capabilities) impacting inter-organizational transfer success are lacking. The in-depth case studies conducted concentrate on joint car development projects between Magna Steyr, an Austrian-based company, and German-based BMW, Mercedes Benz, and Audi. The research results clearly indicate that DiC have an impact on the knowledge transfer process and can explain why the analyzed projects differ in terms of transfer success. Based on the research findings, this work provides managerial implications for all eight dimensions of DiC and, by deploying insights from the empirical investigations, outlines ways to develop them successfully.

Autorentext
Dr. Kay Oppat promovierte bei Prof. Dr. Fritz Fahrni am Institut für Technologiemanagement der Universität St. Gallen. Seit Juni 2008 ist er als Consultant bei Roland Berger in Zürich tätig.

Zusammenfassung
At first glance, the two topics - knowledge transfer and product development processes in the automotive industry - seem to have received abundant research attention and coverage over the last two decades. Can anything new, relevant, and interesting be discovered? Oppat proves that this is not only possible but that it even can be exciting. Knowledge transfer has indeed been investigated thoroughly. Nevertheless the attention has been primarily on the success factors of the transfer process. In his work, the author focuses on the front-end part, i. e. on the input to the process. In dozens of interviews and ca- ful observations Oppat determines the effects of the sender, the disseminative capabi- ties. These capabilities prove to be of importance for the receiving, the absorptive part of the transfer chain. What makes it exciting to follow this research work is the combination of these rather theoretical and abstract ideas with a truly interesting and little known aspect of the - tomobile industry. The cases do not deal with normal supplier OEM relations but with a much more intricate pattern of collaboration. It is the outsourcing of the integral value chain, from the development process of a car model all the way to the manufacturing and even the distribution, which is investigated. The fun of reading and following these thoughts is enhanced by fluent writing and smart illustrations. Prof. Fritz Fahrni, PhD Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and University of St.

Inhalt
Research problem introduction.- Research approach.- Research work foundation.- Development of working propositions.- Case study investigations.- Cross-case analysis and theory building.- Discussion and implications of results.