Investigating Differences in Innovation Processes Between Developed and Emerging Countries:

Abstract

In recent years, researchers have focused on innovations launched from emerging countries, as “Reverse Innovation” proposed by Govindarajan, Immert, and Trimble (2009). Several cases of innovative products developed in emerging countries have been reported, but there are few studies of differences in innovation processes involving idea generation and selection. The main purpose of this study is to examine the characteristics of developed and emerging countries that cause unique innovation through a series of comparative experiments on product ideas. After establishing three hypotheses, the experiments were conducted using graduate students from two developed countries, Japan and Sweden, and three emerging countries, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. To simulate a realistic innovation process, the experiment consisted of three parts: the participants developing ideas, experts evaluating the ideas, and then participants selecting ideas over several group discussions, so that points in the innovation process that differed between developed and emerging countries could be discerned. Differences in both idea generation and idea selection were found. The participants from emerging countries proposed ideas with less novelty and lower investment risk, but also selected ideas with greater confidence, compared to the participants from developed countries. In the study, we also discuss the steps in the administrative innovation process that people from developed and emerging countries should focus on for checking differences against design thinking.

Keywords

• idea generation
• idea selection
• design thinking