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Contemporary organizations are facing an operating environment characterized by volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, and “permanent whitewater.” To sustain high performance in this context, organizations must be able to change and develop as efficiently and effectively as possible. Within organizations, there are actors who catalyze and advance change in this manner; these actors are known as “champions.” Yet the scholar who wishes to conduct research concerning champions of change and organizational development is likely to be met by a highly fragmented literature. Varying notions of champions are scattered throughout extant research, where authors of articles cite different sources when conceptualizing champions; often superficially. Furthermore, many types of highly specific and nuanced non-generalizable champions have proliferated, making it difficult for practitioners and researchers to discover useful findings on how to go about making meaningful changes in their context. The purpose of this study was to address these problems for practitioners and researchers by engendering thoroughness, clarity, and coherence within champion scholarship. This was done by conducting the first comprehensive, critical yet insightful review of the champion literature within the organizational sciences using content analysis to re-conceptualize champions and develop a meaningful typology from which the field can be advanced. The chapter first suggests a return to Schön (1963) as the basis from which to conceptualize champions and, second, offers a typology consisting of 10 meta-champions of organizational change and development – Collaboration, Human Rights, Innovation, Product, Project, Service, Strategic, Sustainability, Technology, and Venture Champions – from which change practice and future research can benefit.

Reports on CCL′s product development technique, using a product champion, who should have a market‐led view and a commitment to take the project through from development to peak of production. Suggests that early trial has an influence on the success of a new product and details the various steps needed to achieve this. Presents a case study of a new development by an international company undertaken in collaboration with CCL, using a product champion.

Since the nineteenth century much has been written about the heroic men of science, technology and commerce who have invented and, via their own individual efforts, commercially exploited new products and novel production techniques and processes, and a copious literature is now available describing the characteristics and actions of these courageous and tenacious independent entrepreneurs. However, while it is true that private individuals continue to make a significant contribution to economic growth via invention and the formation of new businesses, it is apparent that the major present‐day source of commercialisable new ideas is the established industrial firm. The encouragement of internal entrepreneurship would, therefore, appear of prime importance to the would‐be innovative firm to enable it to better exploit its ideas. A second factor which underlines the need to encourage internal entrepreneurship is the increasing degree of concentration in industry (particularly in the science‐intensive industries where the need for innovation is greatest) with its concomitant high levels of bureaucracy and red‐tape which tend to stifle individual commitment and entrepreneurial endeavour. Indeed, a recent paper in this journal has discussed a number of novel organisational forms which are currently being tried in industry, both in the UK and the US, with the express purpose of creating an environment that is conducive to internal entrepreneurship and individual commitment to new innovations.

Innovations lie at the heart of both entrepreneurship and marketing. While research has long focused on the idea generation phase at the beginning of the innovation process, ideas need to subsequently be realized through efforts in idea development and implementation. This paper aims to study the antecedents and practices of idea advancement behavior.

Seven product developers of an international company were interviewed in-depth based on a critical incident technique.

Idea advancement behavior was found to be distributed in time and between people, pervasive in the development process. Antecedents for efforts were identified at personal, interpersonal and work organization levels. Although personal antecedents were most numerous, interpersonal and work organization antecedents distinguished successful and unsuccessful efforts. Key idea advancement behaviors were centered on the inclusion of others and communication channel choices.

The current study offers a complementary micro-level point-of-view to championship literature, illustrating the situated and dispersed nature of everyday advancement efforts as opposed to the dominant depictions of heroic relentless championing individuals. However, as the study was conducted in a single company, the findings still need to be validated in more varied settings.

The results highlight the need for supporting idea advancement behavior across organizational levels and function, instead of focusing on identifying individual champions. Time management, supporting switches in the driving force, and communicating value are necessary for sustaining advancement efforts.

Idea advancement practices have been largely ignored in previous innovation literature, with the exception of systematic processes and championing. This paper explores idea advancement as a commonplace proactive behavior, revealing several levels of key antecedents for successfully advancing ideas into innovations.

Seeks to advocate adopting the comparative case study method and system dynamics modeling to inform theory and to prescribe executive actions for successfully managing new products built using radically new technologies.

Reviews NPD theory and research on the dynamic processes including feedback loops and the hidden demons (hard to identify weak linkages that have large downstream impacts) in radically new innovation, manufacturing, diffusion and adoption/rejection processes; examines the IMDAR process model (innovation‐manufacturing‐diffusion‐adoption/rejection) of new products.

Several alternative routes of tacit and explicit interorganizational behaviors and decisions lead to NPD successes and failures; while executives believe surveys identifying specific factors are important particularly for NPD success, none of these factors is necessary or sufficient by itself for explaining success – specific cases of NPD success occur in the absence of any one of the identified success factors – embracing a system dynamics rather than a main effects view of NPD success and failure provides solid grounding for useful theory and practice in NPD.

Does not provide an empirical comparison between cross‐sectional data‐based modelling versus system dynamics analysis. Business and industrial marketing research that embraces complexity and examines decision and actions over multiple time periods is still in its infancy.

Most successful companies suffer from their success: they fail to remain watchful, mindful, and active with regard to new technological developments that seemingly have minor relationships to their industries.

This paper offers a theory‐of‐the‐firm system dynamics approach to inform new product executives to think beyond check‐lists and embrace multiple‐path thinking.

Recognizing the impact of innovation on organizational performance, scholars from a number of disciplines have sought to identify the conditions that make innovation possible. Although these studies have served to identify a number of key variables, the relationship between these variables and innovation is complex. In this chapter, we argue that the apparent complexity of these relationships may be attributed to cross-level differences in the requirements for innovation and the existence of complex interactions among the phenomena operating at a given level of analysis. The implications of this multi-level perspective for understanding how innovation occurs in organizational settings are discussed.

Considers cases of new product launches where market analysis suggests that the product will fail but when pushed through by an entrepreneur proves to be a commercial success. Describes the process of product introduction to fill unrecognized needs as Ready‐Fire‐Aim, since the market can only be appreciated after the launch. Concludes that product champions must be in a corporate culture that allows risk, and should be prepared to risk their job on a risky venture.

Develops an original 12‐step management of technology protocol and applies it to 51 applications which range from Du Pont’s failure in Nylon to the Single Online Trade Exchange for Auto Parts procurement by GM, Ford, Daimler‐Chrysler and Renault‐Nissan. Provides many case studies with regards to the adoption of technology and describes seven chief technology officer characteristics. Discusses common errors when companies invest in technology and considers the probabilities of success. Provides 175 questions and answers to reinforce the concepts introduced. States that this substantial journal is aimed primarily at the present and potential chief technology officer to assist their survival and success in national and international markets.

Organizational resistance to technological innovations creates hurdles to diffusion of innovations in industrial technology markets. This study aims to examine the causes of this problematic phenomenon and develop useful strategies to overcome innovation resistance of organizational customers.

The paper's conceptual framework is adapted from the motivation‐opportunity‐ability (MOA) paradigm of consumer and organizational information processing. The analysis draws on a body of multidisciplinary literature, empirical observations, and case studies.

The determinants of organizational innovation resistance encompass the psychological, economic, technological, political, strategic, and organizational structural aspects of a technological innovation. Information flow is the key to breaking through the resistance barrier and promoting diffusion of innovations among industrial customers.

An empirical study is needed in the future to test the propositions developed.

The study offers useful strategies to overcome organizational innovation resistance and new approaches to segment and target organizational buyers in technology markets.

The paper fills a research gap in studies on diffusion of innovation by explaining organizational innovation resistance and proposing useful strategies to tackle this problem.

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.