Paper Title
New Product Development and Innovation Approaches: An Exploratory Study in Sri Lankan Apparel Manufacturing Organizations

Abstract
The New product development (NPD) and Innovation are being adopted in Sri Lankan export apparel industry to sustain in the competitive global market. This article explores the key establishments and novel approaches of NPD and innovation which are being practiced in mass-scale apparel manufacturers in Sri Lanka. Qualitative research methods were utilized in designing and analyzing the data to present the holistic view of adopting NPD and other related approaches in the practitioners’ view point. This exploratory study was conducted based on in-depth interviews using semi-structured questionnaire instrument to render the practical approaches. Purposive sample of expert informants were selected from the leading apparel manufacturers with large production volumes with a diverse product categories. The phenomenological analysis method and the R open source software’s RQDA package were used to analyze the interview data systematically. Subsequently, the relationships to key research constructs were extracted using codes and code categories using RQDA. In conclusion, this paper synthesizes the key approaches of NPD and innovation practised by the Sri Lankan export apparel industry drawing future directions for emerging trends in NPD and Innovation as a whole. Key words- Apparel industry, Innovation, New Product Development, Qualitative research methods