This paper examines the informative and usage power of financial statements regarding on-going corporate projects on new product development. Despite the importance of new product development in contemporary business environments, financial statements in the context of product innovation appear to be underexplored in existing literature. Starting from this evidence, as well as concerns about the capability of financial statements to reflect a firm’s value drivers and investors’ complaints about the lack of sufficient disclosure on research and development activities, the aim of this paper is to investigate, from a theoretical viewpoint, the possibilities, limits and potentialities of financial statements in the context of new product development. To this end, this paper, firstly, compares and comprehensively synthesises the current provisions of national (OIC 24) and international (IAS 38) accounting standards relevant to new product development. Secondly, the current accounting discipline is examined using the framework of the cost deferral model and the revenue anticipation model as a lens of analysis. As a result of the application of this original approach to the study of the new product development phenomenon’s interconnections with financial statements, the paper sheds light on what, in theory, the financial statements can tell or cannot tell about on-going corporate new product development projects, or about the potential of using the financial statements to support decision-making and new product development governance. The study’s originality lies in the fact that, through an innovative approach, it offers a theoretical framework of reference to gain an understanding of the interaction between new product development and financial statements. On the managerial side, this framework allows for a better understanding of the meaning of financial statements’ data on new product development while generating an awareness of the possibilities, limits and potentialities of financial statements’ usage in the context of product innovation. On the research side, it contributes to the existing literature while offering new insights and proposing new directions for future studies.
KEYWORDS: new product development, financial statements, cost deferral model and revenue anticipation model
