Search results

Firms report varied levels of success in relation to using alliances to aid in new product development (NPD). This study aims to investigate internal processes that might influence the experience of alliance success. Specifically, this study investigates the role of mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying the alliance orientation (AO)–new product success relationship, while also investigating the impact of the level and consistency of AO. The primary goal is to understand the importance of a firm’s maintaining a consistent focus upon alliance scanning, coordination and learning.

A survey was conducted to collect data from 141 Taiwanese electronics companies. The proposed model and hypotheses were tested using path analysis in analysis of moment structures.

AO improves the success of new products indirectly through the enhancement of product program innovativeness and NPD decision-making flexibility. The positive effect of AO on product program innovativeness and NPD decision-making flexibility is heightened when a firm consistently carries out a series of alliance management activities, including alliance scanning, coordination and learning. Market turbulence and the intensity of competition differentially affect the association between product program innovativeness and NPD decision-making flexibility and new product success.

The measures were self-reported and may result in the threat of common method bias. While this study focused upon protecting against and assessing this bias, collecting data from multiple sources would have helped to eliminate the bias. Further, the sample consisted of Taiwanese electronics firms. This makes it difficult to generalize this study’s findings to other industrial contexts.

While AO may be viewed as a dynamic capability, product program innovativeness and NPD decision-making flexibility represent competitive advantage in NPD program and process, respectively. Managers should not focus only on competitive advantage in NPD while overlooking the development of dynamic capabilities, as this study’s results demonstrate that both elements must work in tandem. AO is relevant at higher levels of the organizational hierarchy, while product program innovativeness and decision-making flexibility are operational, demanding cross-functional coordination and involvement within a firm. Senior executives ought to not only confirm the appropriate provision of their resources to activities and actions associated with product program innovativeness and decision-making flexibility in NPD but also continually monitor and assess whether the inputs of AO lead to desirable competitive advantage in the context of NPD.

This study sheds light on the underlying mechanism through which AO improves new product success. This research proposes two different aspects of AO, level and consistency, and empirically identifies their interactive effect in the context of NPD. The findings offer specific guidelines for the assessment and implementation of AO to improve new product success. Consistency, especially, has not been investigated in relation to alliance-generated new product success.

Innovation implies newness. To define and measure innovation better, we investigated three dimensions of newness: what is new, how new, and new to whom? Drawing on prior research by Schumpeter and Kirzner, we developed a scale that addresses six areas of innovative activity: new products, new services, new methods of production, opening new markets, new sources of supply, and new ways of organizing. Using factor analysis on data from two separate field studies – 684 firms from eight industries and 200 information technology firms – we found that innovation as newness represents a unidimensional construct, distinguished only by the degree of radicalness.

Strategy is examined, using newness of products, markets and technology as the variables. An understanding of newness with reference to the concept of continuous vs. discontinuous innovation along these three dimensions could facilitate evaluation of market and profit potential and the risk factor. Furthermore, this classification system may suggest new business opportunities by indicating gaps in the market and pointing out the critical factor(s) associated with those gaps.

Context characteristics of emerging economies differ significantly from those in developed economies. Considering this substantial difference, this study aims to identify the drivers and barriers for new product development (NPD) success in the context of an emerging economy by drawing on the resource-based view.

Data was collected from firms in different sectors in the Aegean Region of Turkey using the Wageningen Innovation Assessment Tool. Of 189 responses, 94 fit the criteria and used for statistical analysis. The data is analyzed using a two-step procedure, namely, a confirmatory factor analysis followed by a binary logistic regression that is used to model the probability in the study of the success of NPD.

The results reveal that along with the context characteristics of an emerging economy setting, internal capabilities matter for NPD success. Based on interviews with NPD managers, it was found that, among other factors, the close relationship with local customers is key for new product success, while introducing high innovative products to the market of an emerging economy may not be appropriate due to the specific conditions of such economies.

This study will be useful to the managers to understand the extent to which the degree of newness of a product affects NPD success in an emerging economy setting. It also highlights the importance of securing firm resources before starting an innovation activity in this setting where resources such as financial resources, knowledge and physical resources are limited. From a policy perspective, this study provides certain insights as well. That is, government officials in emerging economies should be very careful about their informal actions that might disrupt the investment and innovation environment.

Emerging economies are important for large firms seeking growth. They initiate manufacturing activities and increasingly perform innovation activities in those countries. However, the conditions to innovate are different from those in developed economies. Research into the factors that drive innovation is largely in an embryonic state. This study offers NPD researchers a deeper understanding of the drivers and barriers to innovation, particularly internal ones that may affect the NPD success in an emerging economy setting, in this case, that of Turkey. The results provide suggestions for policymakers to consider during the development of new innovation policies. For practitioners, this study outlines novel combinations of internal factors that lead to NPD success.

Product innovation is central to the success of most companies. The rewards of a successful innovation programme are highly visible in terms of sales, profits and growth. But not so apparent are the strategies that underlie these product innovation efforts. This monograph is about the ingredients of a winning new product strategy — about strategic decisions on markets, technologies, products — that result in a successful innovation programme.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the joint influence of technological newness (TN) and market newness (MN) on the relationship between customer involvement (CI) and new product performance.

The authors employed hierarchical moderated regression analysis to test the hypothesized relationships using survey data collected from 214 Chinese manufacturing firms.

The authors found that the impact of CI on new product performance varies across the different configurations of TN and MN. Specifically, the performance effect of CI is most positive under low TN and high MN, while the performance effect is least positive under low TN and low MN.

This study enriches CI research by identifying different configurations of product innovativeness that augment or limit the value of CI.

In the construction industry, building facade systems are gaining significance as reflected in the number of facade product innovations available on the market. While research studies on the adoption of these facade product innovations are comparatively limited in number. An awareness of the advantages and impacts that a product innovation brings is critical in its adoption, and therefore the purpose of this paper is to develop a classification framework for the use of producers/vendors present the advantages and impacts of their innovative facade products to the architects.

The study, in addition to literature review, consisted of four main steps without distinct boundaries, namely, (1) case study sample selection regarding facade products, (2) data collection through review of published documents, analysis of the data via content analysis and generation of a preliminary framework for the evaluation of facade product innovations, (3) further data collection through semi-structured interviews and analysis of the products and (4) redefining innovation types and finalizing classification framework through assessment of new facade products.

Innovation types may vary according to the product groups under investigation and viewpoints of the classifications. Selected facade products were evaluated in terms of their specific characteristics through identified viewpoints: as a physical object and as an agent. It was revealed that assessing a product innovation in terms of changes in its structural composition and impact on other related physical objects/processes can change the type of innovation. Additionally, insights about improved characteristics specific to facade products, forms of change in these products and architects' new actions in the facade design process were obtained.

Only the products stated by the producers/vendors as being new to the Turkish market at the time they were introduced were evaluated in terms of all aspects proposed in the framework. For these products and others that were evaluated, the product data obtained from the producers/vendors have been deemed to be accurate. Research on equivalent products in the market has not been conducted.

Studies identifying innovation types in the facade industry are very rare. The proposed framework can be regarded as a detailed investigation of product innovation types in the facade industry which offers component-system level improvement/change analysis. Moreover, it can be an effective tool for producers/vendors to ensure that architects have knowledge about their innovative products and their impacts on facade design and also to facilitate the adoption of these products.

The current research aims to analyze antecedents and consequences of using the information provided by customers involved in new service development (NSD). It also seeks to examine the moderating effect of technological turbulence on the antecedents and consequences of information use.

Data were collected from service firms in a variety of industrial sectors. Unit of analysis was a NSD project in which current or potential customers were involved during its development process. A self-administered mail survey was used to collect the data. A total of 102 complete questionnaires were returned. The proposed model was tested using partial least squares.

The results indicate that the instrumental use of the information collected from customers involved in NSD can lead to higher service advantage and service newness and in turn to higher market performance. Findings reveal that higher recording and reviewing of information collected from customers involved in NSD result in greater use of the information during the NSD process. An important result is that under technologically turbulent environments, recording and reviewing information from customers involved in NSD is less likely to result in a higher instrumental use of such information. Finally, the authors' results show that when technological turbulence is high the instrumental use of information from customers involved in NSD has lower value for both service advantage and service newness.

Findings confirm the importance of customer involvement for NSD in a business context. Using the information from customers involved in NSD to resolve specific problems or make decisions regarding NSD projects can result in enhanced service performance. Moreover, information processing capabilities are key antecedents to instrumental information use. Finally, managers should be aware of the potential negative effect of technological turbulence.

This study aims to scrutinize the meaning and domain of “innovation” by providing an extensive theory‐driven review of the new product literature in marketing, management and engineering. The overall objective is to classify the recent literature on innovation and to illustrate theoretically derived discourses in the study of innovation.

The paper organizes this literature by providing typologies of discourses, which define innovation. Based on our review of 238 articles from a comprehensive set of journals publishing innovation research, we propose a theoretical divide in the innovation literature.

Theoretical underpinnings, namely adoption/diffusion theory versus the resource‐based/contingency theory view, form one dimension of the typology. Jointly considered with the other two dimensions – level of analysis and customer vs firm perspective – a framework is formed of the different discourses and conceptualisations in the innovation literature.

Past researchers have always proposed a definition of innovation that was embedded in a typology of innovation types; in contrast, the paper allows the theoretical discourses to unveil meanings of innovation and associated constructs (and hence it starts with theory specification, not construct definition). It argues for starting with theory as the basic division and proposes a theory driven typology. Through its theoretical genesis, the paper wishes to create a shared understanding among academics and practitioners of what constitutes innovation and constructs within the related theoretical net.

The study, which compares the success factors for eco‐innovations with those factors for other innovations, is intended to improve understanding of how eco‐innovations achieve market success.

A case study design is used. Six eco‐innovations cases and six other innovations cases are compared. Data were obtained mainly from interviews with the eco‐innovators and the other innovators, written materials about the innovations, and secondary data from an earlier quantitative study.

The study shows that there are both similarities and differences in the success factors for the two types of innovations. One similarity is that a network with diverse competences supports successful innovators. However, for eco‐innovators the network is used more for solving technological problems. Other innovators use the network to a greater extent for assistance with financing and marketing. In addition, eco‐innovators have greater difficulty than other innovators in attracting venture capital for development.

The results indicate that an interesting approach for future research would be to take a life‐cycle perspective that identifies the factors that influence the further growth and development of eco‐innovative firms.

The identification of the success factors for eco‐innovations' development may improve their chances of success. Furthermore, the results can help policy‐makers improve the support system for commercialization of eco‐innovations.

As a comparative study of success factors for eco‐innovations and other innovations, the study presents a new way to identify such factors for eco‐innovators.