Journal of Product Innovation Management最新文献

Consumer co-creation, an approach in which consumers and organizations jointly innovate, can yield valuable knowledge about consumers' needs and how to satisfy these needs. Yet, innovating with consumers is challenging due to their varying levels of commitment, skills, and motivations. In this research, we focus on challenges we cluster as cognition- and affect-driven and examine how these challenges can be addressed using a design thinking approach. Building on the insights gained from interviews with key co-creation stakeholders (n = 73) and three focus groups with experts in design thinking and co-creation, we develop a grounded process model facilitating co-creation with consumers. More specifically, we distill three co-creation phases (labeled as co-creating context, content, and confluence), consisting of eight constituent activities and resulting dynamics that are cognitive or affective in nature. The distilled affective dynamics manifest in ideation confidence, empathy for diverse perspectives, pleasurable engagement, and being creatively inspired; the distilled cognitive dynamics manifest in an expanded knowledge base and an enhanced ability to analyze and evaluate information. Our grounded model is integrative and responds to calls to further examine affective influences within innovation and organization. Furthermore, our research advances the theoretical substance of design thinking by explaining underlying mechanisms at play that make design thinking an effective approach. Finally, our results add to the literature on consumer co-creation by developing a robust process model that leverages design thinking and adopts a multistakeholder approach to optimize consumer co-creation outcomes. In terms of managerial implications, our research presents a structured framework with phases and (micro)activities that will help organizations to actively involve consumers in their innovation process.

The hidden champion concept has received much interest in practice. As market leaders in niche markets, hidden champions represent the success of the (German) Mittelstand. Innovation is a key element of their strategy and their focus and niche market strategy are associated with specific technological capabilities. However, thus far, little quantitative empirical evidence exists about the innovation output of hidden champions. Drawing on a capability perspective and using patent data, the present study analyzes differences between hidden champions and comparable non-hidden champion firms in their technological innovation. Our results show that hidden champions have a significantly larger technological innovation output but do not have a higher efficiency in their innovation creation compared to other firms from the same industry, size, and age. Moreover, the innovations produced by hidden champions show higher levels of technological depth and indicate lower levels of technological breadth. The sources of technological knowledge of hidden champions seem to be more inward oriented. Finally, innovations of hidden champions have similar technological impact, novelty and quality compared to those of other firms. Overall, our study supports many of the anecdotal beliefs about the innovation of hidden champions contributing to a better understanding of what makes hidden champions different from other Mittelstand firms. Practical implications for hidden champions and Mittelstand firms are discussed.

How do the attributes of a firm's top management team (TMT) influence corporate entrepreneurship across organizational and national contexts? Drawing on upper echelons theory and the managerial discretion perspective, this meta-analytic study examines the dynamic relationship between TMTs' attributes and corporate entrepreneurship, focusing on the moderating role of managerial discretion arising from organizational and national-level factors. To provide insights into the micro-foundations of firm behavior, we explore how key TMT attributes—diversity, size, transformational leadership, tenure, general human capital, and entrepreneurial human capital—affect corporate entrepreneurship. A comprehensive meta-analysis of 57 primary studies reveals that the effect of a TMT's attributes is context-dependent and is significantly influenced by the approach to managerial discretion taken by the country in which the firm operates. By showing that transformational leadership and the TMT's entrepreneurial human capital and size affect corporate entrepreneurship, while attributes like tenure, diversity, and general human capital have limited or no impact, our findings challenge the prevailing view that a standardized approach to the TMT's composition drives corporate entrepreneurship. The study also underscores the role of the national-level managerial discretion and finds that firms in institutional environments that feature low managerial discretion must align their TMT strategies with local institutional contexts to maximize their corporate entrepreneurship. These findings advance upper echelons theory by demonstrating that managerial discretion acts as a boundary condition in shaping how the TMT's attributes influence corporate entrepreneurship based on the national context. This research contributes to the fields of strategic and innovation management and offers practical insights for leaders who seek to harness the full potential of their TMTs.

Effective communication with external or internal stakeholders is crucial for innovation processes. The fourth wave of digital technologies and the fifth industrial revolution have increased the range of communication possibilities, amplifying both the number of communication channels and the availability of data. Yet in existing research that tends to treat communication as an art instead of a science, the evidence only scratches the surface of its mechanics and inner logic. To provide a unified theoretical framework, this study highlights the importance of the four pillars of communication design logic (source, situation, intentions, and impact) in the innovation processes. According to communication theories, individual differences in stakeholders' backgrounds, situations, and intentions might result in systematic variations in what and how they communicate, which influences their subsequent beliefs and reactions to innovation outcomes. By examining relevant communications in terms of their design logic, innovation researchers can address a wide range of questions across ideation, development, and implementation stages. Using novel techniques and unstructured data (e.g., text, image, video, audio mining), the current study reveals tactics for exploring such topics across communication types. The proposed framework also raises several research questions that can be pursued to enhance knowledge of how communication design influences innovation management.

The sharing economy has altered transactions between providers and users in at least two pivotal ways. First, sharing economy offerings are often crowdsourced from a wide range of providers rather than a single firm. Second, these offerings are typically temporarily accessed rather than permanently owned. The effect of these two characteristics on how offerings are exchanged has generated considerable interest from scholars across a wide range of domains, including economics, management, and marketing. However, little is known about the impact of the sharing economy (and crowdsourced provision and temporary access), upon the way offerings are created. As a result, the degree to which innovation in the sharing economy differs from how it is typically conducted is largely unknown. Our research seeks to address this question. Specifically, we begin by reviewing the literature on innovation in the sharing economy and then offer a conceptual framework that focuses on the role of crowdsourced provision and temporary access within the innovation process. We then assess this framework by examining innovations introduced by Uber since its inception. In addition, we explore the degree to which sharing platforms differ from a typical profit maximizing firm by conducting an econometric analysis of the price differences between Uber and a traditional taxi service. We conclude by highlighting the implications of our research and suggesting avenues for future inquiry in this domain.

The rapid adoption of generative AI powered by large language models like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude promises to disrupt innovation for the consumer Internet of Things (IoT). To understand potential consumer behaviors and marketing strategies, we use an assemblage theory framework to analyze the coevolution of consumer and marketer roles in shaping consumer IoT ecosystems like the smart home. Our framework investigates how different consumer- and marketer-driven territorialization and deterritorialization strategies work to stabilize and destabilize the smart home assemblage. We contrast highly territorialized smart homes characterized by preprogrammed behaviors and clear boundaries, with highly deterritorialized DIY smart homes exhibiting unpredictable behaviors and fuzzy boundaries. Our analysis evaluates how consumers territorialize through habit formation, personalization, and sharing experiences, while marketers territorialize by emphasizing reliability, integration, and clear use cases. Consumers deterritorialize by modifying and hacking devices, and integrating nonstandard products, while marketers deterritorialize by disrupting compatibility or targeting new segments. We also integrate flow theory as an interpretive framework for understanding consumer motivations to territorialize and deterritorialize and argue that the oscillation between states of consumer anxiety and boredom create dynamic smart home identities. Our assemblage theory perspective permits a novel strategic framework that can be applied to anticipate consumer and marketer impacts on smart home evolution.

Firms are increasingly adopting innovation contests to obtain ideas for new products and services from external parties, but many firms may not be sufficiently entrepreneurial to benefit from those ideas. Using an inductive longitudinal case study of three financial service firms, we explore the value of external innovation contests for less entrepreneurial and stagnant firms. Our findings indicate that stagnant firms indeed struggle to benefit from ideas generated through external innovation contests. However, we also show that firms undergo a structural change process toward higher entrepreneurial orientation through such contests. In particular, they become aware of an organizational readiness gap and act on it by (i) developing entrepreneurial skills, (ii) collaborating with external partners, and (iii) adapting organizational design and governance. Based on our findings, we propose an original framework for a corporate entrepreneurial learning process triggered by the innovation contest experience.

Not all firms exhibit the same level of commitment to green new product introductions (GNPIs), yet our understanding of the factors underlying these disparities remains incomplete. Prior research has primarily focused on firm-level factors, paying little attention to individual-level antecedents of GNPIs. This imbalance in the GNPI literature contrasts with the broader innovation and general management literature, which displays an ever-growing interest in the “human side of innovation,” acknowledging the relevance of Chief Executive Officers' (CEOs') political ideologies for organizational outcomes. Addressing this imbalance, our study examines the relationship between CEOs' political ideologies and their firms' GNPIs, along with the conditions that shape this influence. Grounded in social identity theory, our study first argues that the more liberal CEOs are, the more GNPIs their firms are likely to generate and that this association is amplified by CEO power. It then proposes that the more liberal CEOs are, the more likely they are to respond to adverse situations beyond their control (a Republican presidency or lower levels of consumer green sentiment) by initiating more GNPIs. It finally posits that the more liberal CEOs are, the fewer GNPIs they tend to initiate in response to adverse situations for which they are accountable (involvement in sustainability-related scandals). We integrate data from seven databases into a longitudinal dataset comprising 89 firms and 192 CEOs over the period 2010–2020 to test our theoretical framework empirically. Time-lagged panel regression analyses strongly support our theoretical arguments. Our findings contribute to the emergence of an individual-level, microfoundational perspective on sustainable innovations, our knowledge about the organizational implications and boundary conditions of CEOs' political ideologies, and the treatment of multiple identities within social identity theory, especially the relationship between political and occupational identities. The implications of our findings extend to business practitioners, offering valuable insights for CEOs, boards of directors, and investors.

Science-based ventures (SBVs) are crucial vehicles that bring new technologies from the lab and to the mainstream market. During this journey, innovation narratives play a crucial role in coordinating innovation. Innovation narratives are linguistic representations that actors use to make sense of innovation activities, events and actions. In other words, they are stories that drive sensemaking, which is a critical element in avoiding conflicts in product innovation process and securing coordinated activities between diverse actors. However, as SBVs shift markets and undergo radical changes, they may have to update narratives to fit these changes. Yet, little is known about how innovation narratives and coordination evolve during this journey. To improve knowledge on this matter, I conducted a 24-month study of a science-based venture crossing over to a commercial market. I find that during this transition, innovation narratives shift from being shaped by progressive storytelling, where the benefits of becoming commercial and hiring nonacademics is highlighted, to being shaped by retrogressive storytelling, where incumbents and newcomers use their respective pasts to develop divergent narratives, and finally to appearing as disintegrated storytelling, where narratives compete and hinder coordination in innovation processes. Building on these findings, I construct a process model of how innovation narratives evolve and disintegrate as SBVs scale. This article contributes to knowledge on innovation management by illustrating how innovation narratives affect coordination in innovation processes, as well as how they may evolve during organizational change. Furthermore, this article illuminates the challenges that SBVs face to their innovation processes when scaling.

Extant research proposes that consumer goal orientation-message frame fit (consumer–message fit) leads to favorable product evaluations. However, there is evidence that consumer goal orientation-message frame misfit (consumer–message misfit) at times also result in favorable evaluations of new products. This study develops and tests a novel prediction that shows how consumer–message misfit results in consumers having more favorable responses toward new products when the type of innovation (incremental vs. radical) is perceived as instrumental to achieving the consumer's goals with the product (innovation–consumer fit), creating a kind of fit–misfit effect. Results from four experiments encompassing multiple new product categories support this fit–misfit prediction. We further show that surprise mediates the effect of fit–misfit. This research builds on current theory involving goal orientations and schema-incongruity, recommends several areas for future research, and presents practical implications for managing new product communication messages.