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AMT implementation has brought with it many opportunities for those businesses which subscribed to it. It also introduced a large number of problems, many of which were internal to the user organizations themselves, such as lack of senior management commitment, poor planning and lack of employee involvement amongst others. There were also problems external to the users concerned, such as poor supplier relationships. Argues that user‐supplier interactions are at the heart of effective and successful AMT implementation. The vehicle through which such relationships can be established is R&D activity. The more visible the R&D role is, the more encouragement suppliers give in involving their customers, the more positive the diffusion of AMT and its subsequent adoption can be. Concludes by proposing a model of AMT diffusion, based on a prominent role for R&D activity.

New product development (NPD) project studies have attempted to identify a common set of factors that will indicate whether a NPD project will succeed or fail. A recent study has shown that there is no universal set of factors; also some factors have contradictory effects on a project’s success. A framework that classifies NPD projects into different contextual groups explains these anomalies. The grouping helps in determining the appropriate weights for the different success/failure factors, and the type of management organization and approach suitable for the project. The many subjective elements make classifying NPD projects into their appropriate contextual grouping difficult. Describes a rule‐based expert system which classifies NPD projects into their appropriate contextual groupings, suggests the level of emphasis for different success/failure factors and the right approach for managing.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate three streams of literature – organizational capabilities based in resource‐based view (RBV) and the team‐ and organization‐level innovation – to provide a theoretical framework of how firms invest in developing innovative capabilities for entrepreneurship and change management.

This is a conceptual paper based on the RBV and the team‐ and organization‐level innovation literatures.

Linking the three bodies of literature, two main models for developing innovative capabilities are proposed: organization and project team models. The “organization model” requires firms to invest at the organization level to generate the supporting organization‐level processes, i.e. communication routines, independent of when they organize for innovation, and the “project team model” calls for just‐in‐time investment as needed in the process of innovation. The paper discusses other potential models and provides directions for future research on this important and timely topic.

The paper expands the RBV of the firm by providing a theoretical framework of how firms develop the capabilities to mobilize and create knowledge for innovation as an entrepreneurial activity and for managing the changes in organizations.

Sustaining product innovation in an established company – increasingly the key to a company’s economic success, and perhaps its survival – is a challenging task The author describes a and the model often referred to as an “Idea lab” that has emerged as a necessary organizational feature to accomplish this goal.

The author explains how to manage Idea labs as deliberately established locations, where individuals and teams with new product ideas can work together for concentrated bursts of time, sharpening and focusing their product concept, embedding the voice of the customer in product design and charting alternative progression paths for their ideas to be developed into potentially profitable offerings by units of the business that will nurture them.

In today’s organizations, the managerial prime directive is fundamentally being redefined as one of addressing the challenge of sustained, profitable innovation that opens new markets or reinvigorates existing ones. Idea labs should be considered a vital process in fostering sustaining innovation.

A critical success factor is the interplay between idea originators, technology specialists and product managers with a keen awareness of customer needs, competitor initiatives and genuine product differentiation.

A comprehensive guide for top managers and innovators, the article details the four key facets of Idea labs: Positioning in the firm’s innovation value chain. Tasks. Processes. Structure.

Several strategies and processes can help companies to enhance the success rate of new products. This study aims to identify a few strategies for that purpose represented by total quality management (TQM) practices, building knowledge and capabilities. Moreover, the current paper discusses the role of applying TQM practices and customer knowledge management in developing the marketing capabilities of the organizations.

This study is a quantitative approach where the data collected from 141 manufacturing small and medium enterprises operating in Malaysia and partial least squares technique was used to test the hypotheses.

The findings of this study highly support all the proposed hypotheses and establish marketing capabilities as a facilitator in the relationship between TQM practices, customer knowledge management and product innovation performance. However, customer knowledge management and TQM were found not to have an impact on product innovation performance.

The introduced model contributes to enhancing the understanding of the impact of customer knowledge on the success of product innovation performance. The model further includes TQM as a process that helps the organization get customer satisfaction information. The incorporation of these two processes will support the organization’s capabilities in the innovation field.

The major research studies into success and failure in new product development that have been conducted over the last 40 years are reviewed. These have provided consistent evidence, especially in the management of the development process, of attributes associated with success. It is shown that most of the studies have produced results that are not in a form for easy application by practitioners. A methodology as to how the past lessons may be applied practically is proposed.

The purpose of this study is to propose a model of a value cocreation strategy (VCS) for analyzing how enterprises adopt innovative, marketing, and design strategies to achieve their performance goals through cocreation.

In the present study, a case study was conducted to establish a preliminary model. Subsequently, 1,000 NPD project managers in information and communications technology industries were approached to complete a two-stage questionnaire survey. The first survey investigated the VCSs they adopted for their marketing, innovation and design activities (valid questionnaires recovered=283). The valid respondents completed a second survey measuring their NPD performance 18 months after launching a new product (valid questionnaires recovered=247).

A conceptual was constructed to explain the effects of innovation marketing and design cocreation strategies on NPD performance. A partial least squares method was used to test the model showing a good fit between the model and the survey data, indicating the applicability of the proposed model. The innovation marketing and design cocreation strategies of the enterprises affected their NPD performance. Enterprises adopting diverse cocreation strategies improved their NPD performance. The cocreation strategies in the model were independent and mediating variables to NPD performance. A qualitative comparative analysis was performed to examine which strategy configurations affected NPD performance and to explore any regular patterns in them. Finally, a cluster analysis was conducted to investigate four cocreation strategies: market development, technology improvement, cost direction and customer service.

Whether different industry categories involve different characteristics and whether different corporate cultures cause inconsistent result in value cocreation warrants further in-depth investigation. In addition, the two surveys conducted in this study were separated by 18 months, and thus, only the short-term NPD performance could be presented. Future studies are recommended to conduct an extensive exploration of different industries, administer long-term surveys, investigate the different levels of influence of various types of enterprise on the proposed research model or examine the degree of difference in the mechanisms and methods adopted for elevating innovation performance.

Enterprises can reference the proposed approach to optimize their product development and services according to their organizational resources and market advantages to increase their market coverage.

This study was the first empirical study to examine critical factors, such as product innovation, marketing, design and value cocreation strategies, and NPD performance by administering two-stage surveys. Enterprises can reference the proposed method according to their organizational resources and market advantages to develop products and services efficiently and face the ever-changing market.

Reports the findings of an exploratory case study research on the contribution of internal and external communication to the commercial success of financial service innovations. An extensive case study research involving four innovation projects was conducted within a leading Belgian bank. The desk research and the 32 in‐depth interviews with senior managers and project leaders served as a platform for theory development. A propositional framework was developed that offers a contingency perspective regarding the role of communication during the different stages of the service innovation process. While many of the existing studies in the field have exclusively focused on external communication, the effectiveness of internal communication is a critical success factor. Furthermore, path dependency effects were created in the project life‐cycle of the financial service innovation projects. Finally, the findings suggest that the effectiveness of internal and external communication depends on the level of intangibility, heterogeneity, simultaneity and perishability of the new service offering.

Reports exploratory research focusing on this neglected area based on semi‐structured interviews with R&D and marketing managers of major international pharmaceutical companies. Major findings include the fact that few of the responding companies integrate marketing and R&D in the formulation of product development strategy which is a considerable source of resentment between the marketing and R&D functions. Also, whilst the move from functional specialisation to cross‐functional therapeutic teams is effective in focusing NPD activity and delivering projects on time, they ignore innovative opportunities that are not directly related to the project. External specialist companies are an increasingly important source of innovation and the ability to manage them effectively is essential for maintaining competitive advantage in the pharmaceutical industry.

This paper aims to provide insight in the set‐up and governance of niche (organic, local and/or regional) pork supply chains and networks (netchains) in the UK, Greece, and Spain, characterized by societal embeddedness and differentiation in food production.

The study consists of 29 expert interviews; it compares the different types of netchain innovation trajectories and concludes on each innovation driver and barrier what lessons can be learnt.

The findings clearly demonstrate the influence of the institutional setting on these netchains; whereas in the UK there is a clear focus on operational excellence and leadership, both in Greece and Spain the focus is on preservation of tradition and culture.

The paper provides directions for further research based on the conclusion that for niche pork netchains to enjoy market growth, effective netchain driven learning structures are needed to catalyze innovation.

Although a lot has been written on the adoption of innovations, the combination of the social network theory with innovation adoption theory seems to be absent in the present literature. So whereas normally theory on innovation adoption is looking at adoption of individual innovations, this study is taking a broader perspective by looking at the adoption of a range of innovations on a netchain level.