While many writers and strategists maintain that innovation is important, research has often demonstrated that product innovativeness does not have a major impact on the rate of success in the marketplace. Elko Kleinschmidt and Robert Cooper demonstrate that the relationship between product innovativeness and commercial success is U‐shaped. That means that both high and low innovativeness products are more likely to be more successful than those in‐between. The authors suggest that past research has not allowed for this non‐linear relationship and that their data show that moderately innovative, middle‐of‐the‐road products are less likely to succeed when measured by a number of performance criteria. They explore a number of implications of these results.
There is no issue more fundamental to new products managers than understanding the factors that separate success from failure. In this article, Robert Cooper and Elko Kleinschmidt present a series of ten hypotheses which they test using data obtained from their study of 203 new products. Significantly, these products include both commercial successes and failures, since previous studies have concentrated on either one or the other. The authors conclude that product superiority is the number one factor influencing commercial success and that project definition and early, predevelopment activities are the most critical steps in the new products development process. Success, they argue, is earned. It is not the ad hoc result of situational or environmental influences. Synergy, both marketing and technical, is crucial.
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