Abstract: This study targets employees from Chinese manufacturing industry as respondents, introduces knowledge sharing into fuzzy front end (FFE) innovation, and then builds knowledge-sharing model in term of related factors, FFE and new product development(NPD) performance for the purpose of exploring how reducing FFE uncertainty impacts on NPD performance. The results show that the reduction of market, resource, organization and technology uncertainty during the FFE poses diverse extent of positive impact on NPD performance; the initial plan has a positive effect on the lessening of market, resources, organization and technology uncertainty and NPD performance improvement; knowledge sharing presents different level of positive impact on the reduction of marketing, resources, organization and technology uncertainty; knowledge sharing produces a promoting impact on NPD performance. The results not only give important theoretical enlightenment to in-depth study of knowledge sharing and FFE, but also provide significant practical guidance for Chinese manufacturing enterprises in NPD.

Key words: fuzzy front end, new product development, knowledge sharing, uncertainty