HOI research | Breaking down product modularity helps R&D teams innovate better
Why product design affects how teams innovate
In today’s world, companies depend on research and development (R&D) teams to generate innovative ideas and new products. However, these teams often encounter complex challenges, particularly when their work involves multiple interconnected components.
To deal with this, many companies turn to a design approach called product modularity. This involves building products using standard parts that can be swapped and reused. Yet, past research hasn’t been clear on how this modularity actually affects innovation.
That is because it often treats modularity as a single concept, when in fact it has two sides: standardization, which is about making things the same, and reconfigurability, which is about remixing parts in new ways. These two aspects might help or hinder innovation in different ways.
Understanding the effects of standardization and reconfigurability
The purpose of this study was to find out how each of these two aspects - standardization and reconfigurability - relate to innovation outcomes. The researchers wanted to know: Do they help R&D teams be more innovative, or do they hold them back? Does it depend on whether the goal is coming up with something entirely new or doing things more efficiently?
To answer this, they studied 101 R&D teams from a global supplier in the automotive industry. Each team worked on a different product. The study used surveys to measure how modular their products were and how well their innovations performed - both in terms of originality and efficiency.
“One of our biggest challenges was that modularity is a concept that is often oversimplified in research, so we needed to separate its dimensions more clearly. We found that combining standardization and reconfigurability into one measure actually hides important effects. That’s why breaking them apart was essential.” explains Stefan Haeflinger.
The future of modular innovation research
This study encourages future researchers to look at modularity in a more detailed way, because treating it as just one concept hides its true effects. Instead, breaking it into two sides - standardization and reconfigurability - gives a clearer picture of how it shapes innovation.
Indeed, there is still more to learn. For example, in this study, standardization surprisingly had no positive effect on efficiency, even though many people assume it would. Future research might look at how industry type or technology complexity affects this relationship. The findings also suggest companies should aim for a balanced level of reconfigurability - not too little, not too much.
Key research findings
- Standardization hurts novelty but was expected to help efficiency - and surprisingly, it didn’t. Teams that built products using highly standardized parts were less likely to create novel innovations and also showed lower innovation efficiency.
- Reconfigurability boosts both novelty and efficiency. Teams whose products allowed parts to be easily rearranged into new combinations were more innovative and efficient in their work.
- Too much reconfigurability may backfire. The study suggests there's a sweet spot - beyond a certain point, having too many ways to recombine parts might actually reduce originality by making things too predictable.
Meet the researcher
- Stefan Haefliger: Professor, House of Innovation
