Medical textile products capabilities

In addition to the core technologies, the development of medical textile products requires a number of other NPD capabilities which the medical textile companies may not possess. SAs offer an economical way to access these capabilities from external sources. In the search for NPD capabilities that can allow medical textile companies to develop products effectively and efficiently, strategic networking with a diverse range of partners can offer an ideal way of combining the companies internal capabilities in core technologies with external capabilities in the other important areas of the NPD process. 

To build up the capabilities that are needed for developing quality products, medical textile companies need to complement their own capabilities with external sources of capabilities when in-house development lacks economy of scale. More importantly, in a dynamic product market external sources of capabilities are essential, since a fixed set of internal capabilities may not be flexible enough to cope with the pace of market and technology changes. Strategic alliances (SAs) in various forms are therefore essential for the NPD process. 

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