Research on Innovation: A Review and Agenda for Marketing Science

Abstract

Innovation is one of the most important issues in business research today. It has been studied in many independent research traditions. Our understanding and study of innovation can benefit from an integrative review of these research traditions. In so doing, we identify 16 topics relevant to marketing science, which we classify under five research fields: Consumer response to innovation, including attempts to measure consumer innovativeness, models of new product growth, and recent ideas on network externalities; Organizations and innovation, which are increasingly important as product development becomes more complex and tools more effective but demanding;. Market entry strategies, which includes recent research on technology revolution, extensive marketing science research on strategies for entry, and issues of portfolio management; Prescriptive techniques for product development processes, which have been transformed through global pressures, increasingly accurate customer input, Web-based communication for dispersed and global product design, and new tools for dealing with complexity over time and across product lines; Defending against market entry and capturing the rewards of innovating, which includes extensive marketing science research on strategies of defense, managing through metrics, and rewards to entrants. For each topic, we summarize key concepts and highlight research challenges. For prescriptive research topics, we also review current thinking and applications. For descriptive topics, we review key findings.