Marketing Organization and Radical New Product Innovation

Abstract

As global competition intensifies and product life cycles shorten, companies are required to achieve radical new product innovations, aside from incremental new product innovations, more frequently than ever. Radical new product innovation can be achieved by exploring new competencies and resources. Incremental new product innovation can be achieved by exploiting existing competencies and resources. Although radical new product innovations are important for companies’ survival, these radical new product innovations are difficult to achieve, due to high-risk markets and technological uncertainty. This dilemma has fueled a growing interest in the determinants of radical new product innovations among marketing and management researchers. Specifically, many marketing scholars have examined how marketing organization hinders or promotes radical new product innovations. The objective of this study is to review existing literature regarding marketing organization and radical new product innovation and to summarize its implications. Specifically, this research reviews the two research streams and draws conclusions on how marketing organizations should engage in radical new product developments. Furthermore, this study indicates several research gaps in this topic and shows directions for further research.

Keywords

• radical innovation
• marketing organization
• new product development