This study assessed the effects on product design, of the so-called ‘information technology’ or IT, embodied in its societal human-system components, i.e., brainware, hardware, software, and support network or net, and the business capability of embedding knowledge management or KM in IT. By itself, IT does not provide any competitive advantage in the goods and services market, as without embedding KM in IT for capable product design, business enterprises cannot truly satisfy their customers. Ergo, the mediating effects must be examined of the KM embedded in IT. Based on 220 questionnaires distributed to industrial business enterprises in China, the proposed-model data were scrutinized through linear and multiple regression analyses. The results reinforce the need to analyze the effects of IT on new product design, while concurrently exploring the relations among IT components and IT capability, embedded KM and product design. These pioneering research results provide insights into IT components and their sensible effects on IT capability, along with the KM embedded in IT, which in turn affect the design of products that do conform to customer specifications, an issue that has received minimal attention until now. Despite the study’s limitations, the article also offers future-research directions and policymaking recommendations.
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