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This article reviews three types of innovation which contribute to organic business development: product innovation, process innovation and market innovation. It argues that market innovation ‐ defined as improving the mix of target markets and how these are served ‐ provides a powerful focus for identifying new business opportunities. Examples from the field of financial services illustrate how skilful market innovation can serve to grow a business as well as to safeguard it from attacks by competitors.

Regardless of its relevance for economic development, the influence of strategic orientation by innovation orientation, and strategic marketing by marketing capability on firm performance, this interesting study focused on firms with strategic industries (defense and security) in Indonesia. It approached the gap in three ways. Initially, the examination was conducted on the role of innovation orientation, marketing capability, the interaction of innovation orientation and marketing capability on firm performance. The next step was considering the contribution of state-owned enterprise (SOE) and non-SOE. Finally, this relationship was studied in strategic industries of firms in Indonesia. The firm performance in this study, which we chose, was operational performance. The proposed conceptual model would be tested by distributing questionnaires to 41 firms in Indonesia. This study gave insight into the matters, which should be the companies’ focus, to improve their operations’ performance. By using PLS-based structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis, the results of the relationship between innovation orientation, marketing capability, and the interaction between innovation orientation and marketing capability on operational performance were identified. The findings could be clarified via the variations in the characteristics of enterprises (SOE and non-SOE). Moreover, there were clear variations in the findings, which were recognized among the firms’ relatively different characteristics. The main finding was a challenge to generalize the relationship from strategic orientation and strategic marketing to performance. The results of firm characteristics also had considerable managerial relevance. The authors recommend strategic industries (defense and security) in Indonesia in achieving operational performance excellence. Management’s importance is paying attention to the relationship between innovation orientation, marketing capability, and dynamic capability in running a company organization.

There are different views on how to gain a sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) for firms. This topic has become an important research area in strategic management. The purpose of this paper is to provide an approach for Chinese firms to use as a springboard to identify sources of SCA through marketing innovation.

Based on a cursory review of the generic literature on how to gain SCA, this paper considers innovation as a primary source of a firm's competitive advantage. From a practical viewpoint, marketing innovation is identified as a significant source of SCA, especially for those firms operating in the dynamic and competitive Chinese economic environment. Through an analysis of marketing innovations at the Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd in China, an approach is developed to help managers identify their unique sources of SCA through marketing innovation.

This study reveals marketing innovation results from a considered analysis of the various marketing factors in the environment and the inter‐relationships between these factors. Subsequently, new sources of SCA can be identified, based on a firm's previous sources of competitive advantage. In this process, different types of competitive advantage are viewed in a holistic framework, which provides the basis for improving firm performance.

The approach developed in this paper offers a basis for managers to identify their firm's unique SCA through marketing innovation.

The paper provides insights for academics and professionals in the field and adds to the literature on emerging economies and SCA.

A significant body of research has focused on the conceptualization of market orientation showing evidence of a positive relationship between market orientation and business performance. However, little attention has been drawn to how innovation could affect this link. Keeping track of limited research on this issue, this study attempts to empirically investigate the moderating effect of product innovation, if any, on the market orientation – profitability link in SMEs. Drawing upon data collected from the food industry in Greece, the findings suggest that product innovation is partially tied to this relationship. Apart from providing some new evidence, the results lead to managerial implications and reveal considerable scope for further research.

Family businesses are on the rise and facing severe sustainability challenges. The overall purpose of this thesis is to examine the moderating role of technological resources in the relationship between marketing innovation and family business sustainability.

From a post-positivist perspective, this study utilized a quantitative approach and causal research design. 204 family businesses within the Accra Metropolitan Assembly were sampled for this study. Structural Equation Modeling (SMART PLS 4) was utilized for data analysis after a closed-ended questionnaire was used to gather data.

It was evidenced that marketing innovation has a positive significant effect on family business sustainability. Technological resources have a negative significant moderating effect on the relationship between marketing innovation and family business sustainability.

The originality of this study lies in examining the moderating effect of technological resources on the relationship between marketing innovation and family business sustainability in Ghana, where this phenomenon is less explored.

Agribusiness shows a growing degree of competitiveness and innovation. However, the organizational mechanisms that compete for innovation and organizational performance are not sufficiently studied. Thus, this study aims to analyze the influence of market orientation and organizational structure on innovation generated and its influence on market and financial performance in agribusiness firms in Extremadura (Spain).

A conceptual model was designed and tested. Data were collected from a questionnaire sent to innovative agri-food companies. The analysis of the model methodologically combines partial least square structural equation modelling, necessary condition analysis and importance-performance map analysis.

The main results reveal that low levels of innovation ambidexterity impact significantly performance but when compared to exploitative innovation, explorative innovation shows a stronger influence on the market and financial performance.

The results are intended to be useful to managers to improve their innovative performance by incorporating new strategies in the market orientation and organizational structure.

The originality of this research lies in the novelty of the proposed mediators, as well as the sector under study. The study expands the knowledge of the influence that market orientation and organizational structure have on the types of innovation (exploitative/explorative).

The purpose of this study is to examine how different innovation efforts can support multinational enterprises’ (MNEs’) pursuits of sustainable development goals (SDGs) in emerging markets and under what circumstances they are applied.

The article comprises in-depth case studies on two high-profile Swedish MNEs: a telecom firm and a fast-fashion firm, with data collected both at the headquarter-level and local-market level.

The study shows that MNEs pursue a selection of prioritized SDGs in emerging markets. To overcome challenges related to attaining these goals, we find that MNEs engage in innovation efforts at different levels of commitment. In some instances, they engage in operational innovation aimed at relieving symptoms of sustainability misconduct and ensuring compliance. In other instances, they engage in systemic innovation efforts, which involve the actual market structures underlying sustainability problems.

MNEs are increasingly incorporating the United Nations SDGs into their innovation strategies. The study contributes to international business research on MNEs’ roles in realizing the SDGs by conceptualizing and discussing two pertinent approaches to innovation.

The purposes of this chapter are to propose definitions of innovation, product innovation, business model innovation, marketing innovation, innovation strategy, and strategic innovation, elaborate on their literature and conceptual underpinnings, and provide an overview of the conceptual domains of innovation, innovation strategy, and strategic innovation.

First, certain definitions of innovation, drawn from literature, are presented. Next, certain definitions that incorporate logically incremental refinements in them are presented. Building on these, definitions of innovation, product innovation, business model innovation, and marketing innovation are proposed.

Innovation is the creation of value by using relevant knowledge and resources for conversion of an idea into a new product, process, or practice, or improvements in an existing product, process, or practice. Innovation strategy is an organization’s relative emphasis on different types of innovations and the associated pattern of resource allocation, in alignment with its strategy at the corporate and business unit levels. Strategic innovation is the creation of value by using relevant knowledge and resources for conversion of an idea into a new product, process, or practice with the potential to have a major transformational effect on the evolution of markets and industries.

Over the past several decades, there has been a sustained and high level of interest in issues relating to innovation among academics in a number of disciplines, business and social entrepreneurs, business practitioners, and policy makers. Books, journal articles, and business magazine articles provide a number of definitions of innovation and specific types of innovation. Multiple definitions of a construct can be problematic in certain respects and beneficial in other respects. A potential upside of multiple definitions of innovation is the prospect of each being a source of ideas for one or more innovations that benefit society, and an impetus for research focusing on specific questions.

Implementation of an idea, value creation, and use of relevant knowledge and resources are used as constituent elements in the proposed definitions of innovation, product innovation, business model innovation, marketing innovation, and strategic innovation.

The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.