Marketing and the power to innovate

Abstract

In the literature of innovation, marketing might just as well not exist. There are a number of reasons for this. Economists’ treatment of marketing itself has been very patchy, especially when compared to the amount of effort they have expended on economic growth and technical change; the bulk of the literature on marketing deals with techniques, and is notoriously shy of the definitions and vocabulary that would enable it to be placed in the wider context of economic discussion. Marketing men themselves like to justify the way in which they make their living by a particular description of their trade. They say that it is the activity of finding out what people need and then seeing to it that products are developed which satisfy those needs. This largely false description then becomes accepted by many others. There is almost total lack of awareness that marketing as we know it, is rooted in specific legislation and international agreement. These were touched upon in the previous chapter, and will be discussed further in the next one. Marketing is not, as many business men think it is, in any sense part of the natural structure of the universe. It is a by-product of one particular system of property rights. Specialist students of innovation, for their part, are still grappling with technology, on the emergence of which there is all too little empirical information. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the added complexities of marketing have been neglected by them.