Findings—Innovations' Origins: When, By Whom, and How Are Radical Innovations Developed?

Abstract

I nnovation research tends to consider only the post-commercialization period or examine a few innovations through case studies. In this study, we examine 29 radical innovations from initial concept to mass-market commercialization. We find that these innovations were developed over an average of at least 50 years and divide this long development period into four distinct stages-conceptualization, gestation, early incubation, and late incubation. We find that the duration of a stage is longer when different firms lead product development at the beginning and end of the stage. These changes in product development leaders happen frequently, e.g., 76% of firms that were first to commercialize an innovation failed to launch it in the broader market. We also find that the time-to-takeoff for a product category is significantly related to the duration of the preceding late incubation stage. In addition, we find four different ways in which radical innovations borrow from prior seemingly unrelated innovations. We report many other findings on when (duration times), by whom (product development leaders), and how (technology borrowing) radical innovations are developed.

Innovation in Retrospect: An Exploratory Study of Trends in the Levels of Innovation

“…The final sample is in line with prior research that used the historical approach in investigating a specific group of innovations of special interest (e.g. Golder, 2000;Golder, Shacham, & Mitra, 2009). …”

“…Some scholars do not even consider non-commercialized technologies as innovation, but rather as mere invention (Marques, 2014). Indeed, in many cases patents and ideas do not mature into working products, but remain passive knowledge that does not translate into further technological evolution (Golder et al, 2009;Trajtenberg, 1990). Accordingly, we contribute to the study of innovation by asserting that a combination of perceptual innovation indicators and objective measures can provide a more nuanced picture, especially for longitudinal aspects of innovation.…”

“…For each of the sampled innovations, we collected information using an historical approach (see Fullerton, 2011;Golder, 2000;Golder, 2009;Hargadon & Douglas, 2001;Sood & Tellis, 2005). The historical approach is a systematic and structured approach that includes the examination of multiple sources of information, and then carefully evaluates each source, considering its credibility and reliability, and to what extent the same www.ccsenet.org/ijbm International Journal of Business and Management Vol.…”

Commercialization of innovations: an overarching framework and research agenda

“…Deployment. Selling/distributing the product through distribution channels (Teece, 1986;Mitchell, 1989;Teece et aL, 1997;Ahuja, 2000a, b (Jaffe et aL, 1993;Henderson and Cockburn, 1994;Christensen and Bower, 1996;Morgan and Berthon, 2008;Damanpour etaL, 2009;George etaL, 2012) and development (Jaffe et aL, 1993;Dahlin and Behrens, 2005;Golder et aL, 2008;Morgan and Berthon, 2008;Damanpour et aL, 2009;George et aL, 2012) With 21 articles, innovation protection also emerged as a theme within the commercialization of innovations. While most of the articles concentrated on means of innovation protection, such as trademarks, patents and copyrights (Jaffe et al, 1993;Grindley and Teece, 1997;Jaffe, 2000;Shane, 2002;Alcacer and Gittelman, 2004;Ziedonis, 2004;de Laat, 2005;Hall et aL, 2005;Lecocq and Demil, 2006), many linked protection with other themes such as innovation sources (Jaffe, 1986;Levin et aL, 1987;Levin,1988;Jaffe et aL,I993;Cassiman and Veugelers, 2002;Shane, 2002;Aldridge and Audretsch, 2010;Gambardella and McGahan, 2010;Datta et aL, 2011;Link et al, 2011), innovation type (Jaffe et aL, 1993;Dahlin and Behrens, 2005;Anokhin et aL, 2011), development (Lowe, 1993;Garud et aL, 2002;Shane, 2002;…”

“…Often times, collaboration increases the duration from conceptualization through commercialization when too many firms are involved in the collaboration (Golder et aL, 2008).…”