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The constant introduction of new products is of great importance for the long-term financial success of companies. Newly launched products in consumer goods and services markets show high failure rates, often reaching 50%. In order to reduce flop rates, companies can integrate innovative and knowledgeable customers, so called 'lead users', into the new product development process. However, the detection of such lead users is difficult, especially in consumer goods markets with very large customer bases. A new and potentially valuable approach for the identification of lead users are virtual stock markets, which have been proposed and applied for political and business forecasting, but not for expert identification yet. The goal of this paper is to analyze theoretically and empirically the feasibility of virtual stock markets for lead user identification. We find in our empirical study that virtual stock markets are an effective instrument to identify lead users in consumer goods markets. Using the proposed method, companies operating in these markets can identify lead users more easily and integrate them into new product development projects. Thus, they can improve the innovation processes and reduce new product flop rates.
Highly recognized case studies and the intuitive notion that a heroic champion is required to help innovations overcome the indifference or even resistance that they face in many organizations explain that there has been a positive bias among academics and managers toward the role of champions in innovation processes. A look into the previous empirical literature on champions reveals, however, that a rigorous empirical investigation into organizational factors causing the emergence of executive champions and their impact on innovation performance is lacking. In addition, previous empirical research on champions is plagued with methodological problems such as measurement issues and single informant bias. This study uses multiple informant data from 258 respondents from 43 firms to examine various hypotheses. The findings reveal that executive champions are likely to emerge in organizational cultures that are conducive to innovation and they are less likely to emerge in organizational cultures that are unfavorable for innovation. We further find a non-linear, inverted u-shaped relationship between the level of executive championing activity and innovation performance. We find, in contrast with the commonly held belief, that executive champions have a strong negative impact on innovation performance particularly in cultures that make it difficult to innovate. Among the tested moderators, only the implementation of incentives for executive champions based on innovation performance offsets the negative impact of these champions on innovation performance. The findings lead us to substantially rethink the commonly believed role champions play in innovation processes.
The Leading Question:
What Western multinational corporations (MNCs) need to know to successfully reverse their innovation flow i.e. launch new products developed in emerging markets in their domestic markets?
Main Findings:
- Realities in emerging markets are well suited for designing basic products that can be the starting point for product up-contenting.
- Products originally developed for emerging markets can be successfully adapted for sale in developed markets – a “reverse” innovation flow gains momentum.
- This strategy can both help to unlock new customer segments in wealthy markets and to compete against emerging MNCs, private labels, and generics conquering these markets bottom-up.
Past research has identified innovation portfolio management as a key success factor for a firm’s new product development process. However, the relevant literature falls short in considering the strategic scope of innovation portfolio decision-making. To take a first step in this direction, Marcel Coulon defines the construct of ‘portfolio orientation’ as a strategic orientation. He develops a conceptual framework to identify performance effects of portfolio-oriented decision-making for new product development programs. Based on data of more than 200 German companies, he presents three papers. First, he addresses contingencies for portfolio orientation effectiveness to help understand interactions of formal innovation management with new product development issues inside and outside firm boundaries. Second, he identifies best performing portfolio types for specific levels of portfolio management formalization. Third, a variety of antecedents and their impact on a firm’s portfolio orientation are presented. Accordingly, the book is equally relevant for practitioners and academics in the fields of research and development management and innovation management, as well as strategic marketing management.
This article analyses the scope and impact of patent management in high technology companies. The exploratory empirical study is based on a conceptual framework, which relates patent management to firm performance by taking various contingent factors into account. The empirical analyses give a detailed descriptive overview about patent management in high technology firms. Further, differences in patent management between young and established high technology companies and special characteristics of biotechnology firms are examined. Finally, preliminary insights regarding the impact of patent management on firm performance are gained. The empirical findings have implications for improving patent management in high technology firms.
Web-based interaction between customers and producers offer new promising ways of bringing customers into the company right to where the value creation begins - in new product development (NPD). Despite the high potential of virtual customer integration (VCI), practical application is limited. The decision of initial utilization of VCI depends on the manager’s predisposition - favorable or unfavorable -towards VCI; usually, it is the responsibility of managers and executives belonging to the development, marketing or innovation departments to sanction such a decision. To get a deeper understanding of antecedents leading to the application of VCI, further information is needed. In this paper, the authors shed light on the various factors affecting managerial intention to apply virtual customer integration. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) provides a basis for developing a research model explaining the relation between managers’ cognition, attitude, social norms, perceived behavioral control and their intention to adopt VCI. The initial results of our empirical study, wherein we interviewed 94 managers within the consumer goods and services field, show that the TPB accounts for 66 percent of the variance in the managers’ intention to apply VCI. Furthermore, the study reveals that social norms and perceived behavioral control are the main factors which influence managerial decision to apply VCI. This contrasts with the widely-held theory that an individual's attitude is the most significant factor of influence.
Lehrstuhlbericht
(2009)
Lehrstuhlbericht
(2008)