The organisational communication role to the cross-functional collaboration on the product development process

Cross-functional collaboration is one of the decisive factors to the innovation success of new products. However, since the new product development (NPD) demands that different perspectives are considered, organisational communication is one of the fundamental issues for the collaboration happens. Thus, the study objective is to analyse the organisational communication role to the cross-functional collaboration on the NPD process. An exploratory research was performed, with a qualitative and quantitative approach along with managers from industries of distinct sectors. The results pointed that organisational communication is important to the cross-functional collaboration, being able to be complicated mainly by factors like the organisational culture and distinct organisational points of view and favoured through discussion of problems and solutions and formulation of common objectives. Considering the results, we proposed a process model to assist the industries to optimise the cross-functional collaboration on NPD through organisational communication.