Abstract
Extant research has identified a broad set of antecedents of innovativeness, with the assumption that maximizing as many of them as possible leads to sustained innovativeness. However, companies usually face resource constraints and therefore must strive to identify and combine the most important drivers of superior innovativeness effectively. This research addresses this practical challenge by identifying typical patterns of innovation orientation and their associated performance outcomes. Drawing on configuration and boundary theory, the authors develop a framework and hypotheses, then use data from marketing managers, R&D managers, and customers to identify four patterns: integrated innovators, internally driven preservers, proactive customer-oriented innovators, and top-down innovators. The empirical results reveal performance differences across these patterns. An integrated approach leads to the highest innovativeness scores, but proactive customer-oriented innovators and top-down innovators enjoy the greatest financial success.
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Notes
Because marketing managers completed the items to measure both customer information acquisition activities and performance, common method variance may occur. To alleviate this concern, we used customer data to validate the managers’ NPP innovativeness assessments.
We did not obtain objective financial performance measures from secondary sources because many companies in our data set were not publicly listed, and most companies have reservations about providing such data, so including these measures could have reduced the size of our multiple informant data set.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Gisela Bieling, Joe Cannon, Julia Roederer, Lisa Scheer, and Björn Six for their helpful comments on a prior draft of this article. Financial support from the “Vereinigung von Freunden der Technischen Universität zu Darmstadt e.V.” (Association of Supporters of the Technische Universität Darmstadt) is gratefully acknowledged. We thank three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions throughout the review process.
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Stock, R.M., Zacharias, N.A. Patterns and performance outcomes of innovation orientation. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 39, 870–888 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-010-0225-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-010-0225-2