A critical look at technological innovation typology and innovativeness terminology: a literature review

Abstract

A plethora of definitions for innovation types has resulted in an ambiguity in the way the terms 'innovation' and 'innovativeness' are operationalized and utilized in the new product development literature. The terms radical, really-new, incremental and discontinuous are used ubiquitously to identify innovations. One must question, what is the difference between these different classifications? To date consistent definitions for these innovation types have not emerged from the new product research community. A review of the literature from the marketing, engineering, and new product development disciplines attempts to put some clarity and continuity to the use of these terms. This review shows that it is important to consider both a marketing and technological perspective as well as a macrolevel and microlevel perspective when identifying innovations. Additionally, it is shown when strict classifications from the extant literature are applied, a significant shortfall appears in empirical work directed toward radical and really new innovations. A method for classifying innovations is suggested so that practitioners and academics can talk with a common understanding of how a specific innovation type is identified and how the innovation process may be unique for that particular innovation type. A recommended list of measures based on extant literature is provided for future empirical research concerning technological innovations and innovativeness.

Capacidade de Inovação: Revisão Sistemática da Literatura

“…Como fator resultante, encontram-se medições tanto de output quanto de outcomes. As expressões innovativeness e innovationcapability são utilizadas tanto como denominação de construtos outputs como de outcomes (Garcia & Calantone, 2002;Salavou, 2004).…”

Firms’ skills as drivers of radical and incremental innovation

“…Following Garcia and Calantone (2002), in this paper new-to-market innovation is taken to be a radical innovation (although, it should be noted that it may have existed on other markets previously) while new-to-firm innovation can be deemed an incremental/imitative innovation, as the product is already available from competitors. Specifically we are interested in two questions.…”

The role of management practice and business environment in promoting firm innovativeness

“… Describing the other independent variable, dynamic business environment, we used the classification of environmental factors given by Bourgeois and Eisenhardt (1988) and a modified scale of Jaworski and Kohli (1993), so that the original items were translated and adjusted for the purpose of this study.  When measuring the dependent variable, firm innovativeness, we took into account the fact that there are various definitions and criteria of firm innovativeness (Green, Gavin, Aiman-Smith, 1995;Garcia & Calantone, 2002). We used the definition that firm innovativeness is most frequently viewed through a number of innovations that the organization accepts and produces (Subramanian & Nilakanta, 1996;Garcia & Calantone, 2002).…”

“… When measuring the dependent variable, firm innovativeness, we took into account the fact that there are various definitions and criteria of firm innovativeness (Green, Gavin, Aiman-Smith, 1995;Garcia & Calantone, 2002). We used the definition that firm innovativeness is most frequently viewed through a number of innovations that the organization accepts and produces (Subramanian & Nilakanta, 1996;Garcia & Calantone, 2002). We include a four-item scale of innovativeness (two items adapted from Bell, 2005) in our study.…”