Research Priorities for Innovation

Firms must innovate to discover new ways to create value for customers. At the enterprise level, firms must design their organizational structure, build a culture, develop capabilities, and provide rewards to encourage successful innovation.

Innovation in Business Models. New business models can be powerful; they can create markets, disrupt markets, shift product-market boundaries, and alter competitive structures. Hence, research is required to provide frameworks and tools for firms to identify and assess opportunities for innovation in business models at very early stages (“green fields”). How should diverse innovation opportunities be prioritized? Research is also needed to identify ways for firms to collaborate with network partners. What are useful methods for assessing the innovation capabilities, resources, and activities of network partners, as well as for assigning roles? How are intellectual property rights and prices determined for products created with open innovation models?

Innovation in Business Processes. How can firms create and sustain organizational processes and cultures that anticipate, adapt to, and successfully manage innovation—especially at the marketing/technology interface? Under what conditions should firms internalize specific marketing innovation capabilities and processes such as design capabilities to obtain a competitive advantage? This issue is especially important for service organizations where service processes are a key component of the marketing mix.

Innovation in Products. Firms require new approaches to identify product concepts and forecast their market potential at a very early stage—and still account for post-launch factors such as market, category, competitor, channel, and retailer responses. Forecasts and entry strategies must also take into account economic, social, cultural, regional, and national factors. Exacerbating these challenges, the success of a new product introduction partially depends on social network effects—which firms are not yet well equipped to predict or leverage. Traditional stage-gate new product development processes that have been successful for goods do not seem to work equally well for services or good/service hybrids; hence, improved new product/service development processes are also required. Research is also required to help firms design new products dynamically in real time by learning and adapting to customer behavior.