5262020 Innovation Process Design Scoring Guidehttpsc.docx

5/26/2020 Innovation Process Design Scoring Guide
https://courserooma.capella.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/BMGT/
BMGT8136/190700/Scoring_Guides/u07a1_scoring_guide.html
1/1
Innovation Process Design Scoring Guide
Due Date: End of Unit 7
Percentage of Course Grade: 20%.
CRITERIA NON-PERFORMANCE BASIC PROFICIENT
DISTINGUISHED
Create a set of
intraorganizational
innovation
processes, a cluster
of innovation, and a
model that engages
the customer in
innovation.
33%
Does not create a set
of intraorganizational
innovation processes
or a model that
engages the
customer in
innovation.

Creates limited
elements of
intraorganizational
innovation processes,
clusters of innovation,
and a model that
engages the
customer in
innovation.
Creates a set of
intraorganizational
innovation
model that engages
the customer in
innovation.
Creates with exceptional
clarity intraorganizational
innovation processes, a
cluster of innovation, and
a model that engages the
customer in innovation.
Provides strong synthesis
of theories, comparing
and contrasting the
concepts.
Apply the concepts
of the
intraorganizational
innovation

model that engages
the customer in
innovation to a for-
profit publicly
traded organization.
33%
Does not apply the
concepts of the
intraorganizational
innovation
of innovation, or a
model that engages
the customer in
profit publicly traded
organization.
Partially applies the
concepts of the
intraorganizational
innovation processes,
a cluster of
innovation, and a
model that engages
the customer in
organization.
Applies the concepts
of the
intraorganizational
innovation

model that engages
the customer in
organization.
Applies the concepts of
the intraorganizational
innovation processes, a
cluster of innovation, and
a model that engages the
customer in innovation to
a for-profit publicly traded
organization.
Communicate in a
manner expected of
doctoral-level
composition,
including full APA
compliance and
demonstration of
critical thinking
skills.
34%
Fails to communicate
in a manner
expected of doctoral-
level composition;
assignment has gaps
in APA compliance
and in demonstration
of critical thinking
skills.

Communicates at a
basic level expected
of doctoral-level
composition,
including partial APA
compliance and
demonstration of
critical thinking skills.
Communicates in a
manner expected of
doctoral-level
composition,
including full APA
compliance and
demonstration of
critical thinking
skills.
Communicates
exceptionally well in a
manner expected of
doctoral-level
composition, including full
APA compliance and
demonstration of
exceptional critical
thinking skills.
16
Journal of Marketing

Vol. 75 (January 2011), 16 –30
© 2011, American Marketing Association
ISSN: 0022-2429 (print), 1547-7185 (electronic)
V. Kumar, Eli Jones, Rajkumar Venkatesan, & Robert P. Leone
Is Market Orientation a Source of
Sustainable Competitive Advantage
or Simply the Cost of Competing?
The authors use panel data constructed from the responses of
repeatedly surveyed top managers at 261
companies regarding their firm’s market orientation, along with
objective performance measures, to investigate the
influence of market orientation on performance for a nine-year
period from 1997 to 2005. The authors measure
market orientation in 1997, 2001, and 2005 and estimate it in
the interval between these measurement periods.
The analyses indicate that market orientation has a positive
effect on business performance in both the short and
the long run. However, the sustained advantage in business
performance from having a market orientation is
greater for the firms that are early to develop a market
orientation. These firms also gain more in sales and profit
than firms that are late in developing a market orientation.
Firms that adopt a market orientation may also realize
additional benefit in the form of a lift in sales and profit due to
a carryover effect. Market orientation should have a
more pronounced effect on a firm’s profit than sales because a
market orientation focuses efforts on customer
retention rather than on acquisition. Environmental turbulence
and competitive intensity moderate the main effect
of market orientation on business performance, but the
moderating effects are greater in the 1990s than in the

2000s.
Keywords: market orientation, customer relationship
management, longitudinal, sustainable competitive
advantage, business performance
V. Kumar is Richard and Susan Lenny Distinguished Chair in
Marketing
and Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Brand &
Customer
Management, J. Mack Robinson School of Business, Georgia
State Uni-
versity (e-mail: [email protected]). Eli Jones is Dean and E.J.
Ourso Distinguished Professor, E.J. Ourso College of Business,
Louisiana
State University (e-mail: [email protected]). Rajkumar
Venkatesan is Bank
of America Professor in Marketing, Darden Graduate School of
Business,
University of Virginia (e-mail: [email protected]). Robert
P. Leone is a professor and J. Vaughn and Evelyne H. Wilson
Chair of
Marketing, Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian
University (e-mail:
[email protected]). All authors contributed equally. The authors
thank Ed
Blair, Ruth Bolton, Steve Brown, Lawrence Chonko, Partha
Krishna-
murthy, Stanley Slater, Dave Stewart, and the three anonymous
JM
reviewers for their comments on previous versions of this
article. Roger
Kerin served as guest editor for this article.
As businesses become increasingly competitive, mar-
keters must identify routes for improved measurement of

[investments in marketing activities]. (Scase 2001, p. 1)
D
ynamism in business environments caused by eco-
nomic slowdown or growth, competitive intensity,
globalization, mergers and acquisitions, and rapid-
fire product and technological innovations challenges top
managers’ ability to sense and respond to market changes
accurately. The inability to sense and respond to market
changes quickly has led to the demise of many firms with
household names, including Kmart and Circuit City. There-
fore, it is critical that managers identify and understand
strategic orientations that enable a firm to sustain perfor-
mance, especially in the presence of rapid changes in mar-
ket conditions.
The marketing concept that has existed for many years
was one of the first strategic frameworks that provided
firms with a sustainable competitive advantage (SCA). Aca-
demics first began recognizing and operationalizing the
marketing concept as “market orientation” in the 1990s
(Kohli and Jaworski 1990). During the past 20 years, hun-
dreds of articles have been published on market orienta-
tion’s effect on business performance (Kirca, Jayachandran,
and Bearden 2005). However, few studies have investigated
the longer-term benefits of market orientation (for excep-
tions, see Gebhardt, Carpenter, and Sherry 2006; Noble,
Sinha, and Kumar 2002), and almost nothing has been pub-
lished on this relationship using longitudinal data. This is an
important gap because obtaining business sustainability
remains a key concern for senior managers. Thus, a replica-
tion and extension of prior work is needed, using a longer
horizon to validate the full extent of market orientation’s
time-varying effect on business performance. Therefore, in

this study, we use existing measures from the literature to
assess the performance of market orientation on long-term
business performance. Our two specific questions are as fol-
lows: (1) Does market orientation create a source of SCA,
or is it a requirement that companies face when competing
in today’s business environment? and (2) How much is
gained, and how long can firms expect the advantages from
developing a market orientation to hold?
Market Orientation and Long-Term
Performance
The literature suggests that market orientation’s primary
objective is to deliver superior customer value, which is
based on knowledge derived from customer and competitor
analyses and the process by which this knowledge is gained
and disseminated throughout the organization (e.g., Felton
1959; Narver and Slater 1990). A superior understanding of
customer needs, competitive actions (i.e., industry structure
and positional advantages), and market trends enables a
market-oriented firm to identify and develop capabilities
that are necessary for long-term performance (Day 1994).
Investments in capabilities, such as active information
acquisition through multiple channels (e.g., sales force,
channel partners, suppliers), incorporation of the customer’s
voice into every aspect of the firm’s activities, and rapid
sharing and dissemination of knowledge of the firm’s cus-
tomers and competition, take time to provide returns. For
example, investments in improving customer satisfaction
affect firm performance through improved customer reten-
tion and profitability. However, these benefits from improv-
ing customer satisfaction are more likely to be observed in
the long run than in the short run.

Market orientation is a capability and the principal cul-
tural foundation of learning organizations (Deshpandé and
Farley 1998; Slater and Narver 1995). Through constant
acquisition of information regarding customers and compe-
tition and the sharing of this information within an organi-
zation, market-oriented firms are well positioned to develop
an organizational memory, a key ingredient for developing a
learning organization. Furthermore, a market orientation
encourages a culture of experimentation and a focus on con-
tinuously improving the firm’s process and systems. This
implies that developing and improving on a firm’s market
orientation may make a firm’s capabilities become more
distinctive (relative to the competition) over the long run,
resulting in SCA.
There are also reasons to believe that market orientation
may not provide an SCA. First, a market orientation may
lead a firm to narrowly focus its efforts on current cus-
tomers and their stated needs (i.e., adaptive learning versus
generative learning; Hamel and Prahlad 1994; Slater and
Narver 1995). Such a narrow focus could lead to market-
oriented firms not anticipating threats from nontraditional
sources, thus restricting a market orientation’s capability to
provide an SCA. Second, and most important, a market ori-
entation can provide long-term performance benefits if it is
not imitable by the competition. Capabilities and processes
are not imitable if they provide firms with tacit knowledge
that enables them to understand customers’ latent needs
(Day 1994). However, such a tacit knowledge base is devel-
oped only if firms adopt a broader and more proactive
approach to market orientation (Slater and Narver 1998).
Finally, it is widely accepted that a firm’s only sustainable
advantage is its ability to learn and anticipate market trends
faster than the competition (De Geus 1988).
Again, the majority of the published empirical support for

the benefits of market orientation is based on cross-sectional
databases. Therefore, our knowledge is limited to market
Market Orientation and Sustainable Competitive Advantage / 17
orientation’s influences on static measures of performance.
Cross-sectional databases cannot control for potentially
unobservable, firm-specific effects and cannot uncover the
time-varying effects of market orientation. For example,
Gauzente (2001) suggests that there are three aspects of
time that affect market orientation and its impact on perfor-
mance: (1) lagged, (2) threshold, and (3) cumulative effects.
Therefore, empirical studies examining market orientation’s
influence on business performance over time would provide
a more complete view of the benefits associated with devel-
oping and improving a market orientation. The few longitu-
dinal studies that exist show no long-term relationship
between market orientation and return on investment, which
indicates that a market orientation may be too costly and
that the returns are not large enough to justify the cost of
implementation (Narver, Jacobson, and Slater 1999).
In summary, the ability of market orientation to provide
an SCA is still unresolved, because the evolutionary nature
of a market orientation–performance relationship has not
been satisfactorily addressed. In this study, we treat a mar-
ket orientation–performance relationship more realistically
and more fully as an unfolding process rather than a dis-
crete event. Our longitudinal study design enables us to pro-
vide further insights into the dynamic nature of market ori-
entation’s effect on business performance.
Effect of Competition
Prior theoretical and empirical research has investigated the
effect of market orientation of a firm independent of the ori-
entation of the competitors in the industry. Thus, a funda-

mental question regarding market orientation still remains
unanswered: Does a market orientation still provide a
competitive advantage if the firm’s competitors are also
market oriented? In other words, as more firms in an indus-
try become market oriented, does a firm’s market orienta-
tion transform from being a success provider to being a fail-
ure preventer? That is, do moderate or high levels of effort
to maintain a market orientation only prevent failure and
not necessarily improve performance (Varadarajan 1985)?
Related to this, firms investing in developing a market
orientation want to know the advantages obtained from
being the first to adopt a market orientation in an industry.
Early adopters of market orientation can obtain insights into
customer needs before the competition. Responding to
these customer insights through the development of product
or service innovations can provide firms with improved
business performance. However, rarely is a product or ser-
vice safe from imitation by competition. Furthermore, com-
petitors can develop their own system and culture of being
market oriented and can potentially change the market struc-
ture as well. For example, pharmaceutical companies derive
competitive advantages while their products are under
exclusive patents, which provides them lead time in devel-
oping SCA while they recoup research-and-development
costs. However, competitors often develop and patent
“similar” formularies, which could lead to industry equilib-
rium. An example in the technology industry is the compe-
tition between IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Although IBM
pioneered the concept of a single firm providing hardware,
software, and services, which provided lead time in devel-
oping an SCA, Hewlett-Packard matched this concept even-
tually and surpassed IBM in becoming the largest informa-

tion technology firm in the world.
Using a unique panel data set obtained from (1)
repeated surveys of top managers regarding their market
orientation and (2) objective measures of business perfor-
mance, we provide empirical evidence for first-adopter
advantages with regard to developing a market orientation.
Our study offers new insights at a critical time in business
history by more fully explicating market orientation’s influ-
ence on business performance. We examine the business
performance–market orientation relationship and investi-
gate whether it has changed over the 1997–2005 period.
This gives us a view of the short-term and long-term effects
of having a market orientation. It also enables us to deter-
mine whether these effects have changed over the nine
years under study. In this study, we refer to the effect of
market orientation in a particular year on business perfor-
mance in that year (i.e., the current or contemporaneous
effect) as the short-term effect of market orientation. The
long-term effect refers to the cumulated effect of market
orientation from the prior years on business performance in
a particular year and includes the current period’s effect of
market orientation.
To be consistent with prior studies and avoid model
misspecification, we also include environmental variables
(turbulence and competitive intensity) as moderators of the
relationship between market orientation and business per-
formance, and we examine these effects over a longer
period than prior studies. Including the environmental mod-
erators enables us to evaluate whether market orientation is
a source of SCA when rapid changes occur in market con-
ditions. As Figure 1 illustrates, use of these panel data per-
18 / Journal of Marketing, January 2011

taining to market orientation, environmental moderators,
and business performance enables us to assess the evolving
nature of market orientation on business performance. Fig-
ure 1 depicts the relationships that we test in this study.
Our analyses indicate that market orientation had a posi-
tive effect on business performance in both the short and the
long run. However, the sustained advantage in business per-
formance from having a market orientation was greater for
the first (early) adopters in an industry. The firms that were
early to develop a market orientation gained more in sales
and profit than firms that were late to develop a market ori-
entation. Furthermore, firms that adopted a market orienta-
tion early also realized the benefit of a bonus in the form of
a lift in sales and profit due to a carryover effect that lasted
up to three periods. By computing measures of elasticity, it
is possible to assess whether market orientation has a more
pronounced effect on a firm’s profit than sales. Because
market orientation focuses a firm’s efforts on customer
retention rather than on acquisition, market orientation
should give a greater lift to profit than to sales. Environ-
mental turbulence and competitive intensity moderated the
main effect of market orientation on business performance,
but the moderating effect was greater in the 1990s than in
the 2000s.
Devoting resources to market orientation can be a costly
and slow process. Thus, in addition to testing theory, the
research findings are useful to managers who are reevaluat-
ing their decision to continue investing in building market-
oriented organizations. A long-term view reinforces the
impact of implementing and maintaining a market orienta-
tion on sustained improvements in business performance.
Our study contributes to the literature by evaluating, for the
first time, (1) the long-term effects of market orientation on
sales and profit, (2) the effect of competition over time on

FIGURE 1
Market Orientation on Business Performance over Time: Main
and Contingent Effects
Market
Orientation
Early
Adopter
Market
Orientation
Midterm
Adopter
Market
Orientation
Late
Adopter
Industry-
and Firm-
Specific
Factors
Environmental Factors (over Time)
Business Performance
(over Time)
Market and
technological

turbulence
Competitive
intensity
Sales
Profitability
the relationship between market orientation and a firm’s
business performance, and (3) the time-varying effects of
the previously studied moderators on a market orientation–
business performance relationship. In the sections that fol-
low, we review the existing literature, propose and test
hypotheses arising from our review, discuss the empirical
findings, and state several managerial implications.
Conceptual Background and
Hypotheses
Market Orientation as a Potential Source of SCA
Market orientation is the generation and dissemination of
organizationwide information and the appropriate responses
related to customer needs and preferences and the competi-
tion (Kohli and Jaworski 1990). A market orientation posi-
tions an organization for better performance because top
management and other employees have both information on
customers’ implicit and expressed needs and competitors’
strengths and a strong motivation to achieve superior cus-
tomer satisfaction (e.g., Pelham 1997). These capabilities
can be transformed into an SCA when a firm uniquely has
the information and uses the market information efficiently
and effectively as part of a process. During the past few

years, organizations have embraced a market orientation
concept and its purported benefits, which has created an
intensely competitive landscape. What happens, then, when
the competition is also market oriented? It is important to
note that though several valid operationalizations of market
orientation exist (for details, see Deshpandé, Farley, and
Webster 1998), we follow the capabilities-based definition
that Jaworski and Kohli (1993) propose.
Empirical Evidence of a Market Orientation–
Business Performance Link
Main effects. Prior research has illustrated that a high
degree of market orientation in an organization leads to
short-term improvements in sales and profitability growth,
market share, new product success, customer satisfaction,
and return on assets, compared with other organizations that
are not as highly market oriented (Deshpandé, Farley, and
Webster 1993; Jaworski and Kohli 1993; Slater and Narver
1994). At the same time, market orientation is not associ-
ated with superior performance after a crisis (Grewal and
Tansuhaj 2001), in the theater industry (Voss and Voss
2000), and in the retail industry (Noble, Sinha, and Kumar
2002).
The vast literature regarding the positional advantages
of first (early) adopters and the capabilities of later entrants
is relevant to our study. Organizational innovations such as
market orientation provide more durable cost and differenti-
ation advantages than product or process innovations
(Lieberman and Montgomery 1988). Firms that are first to
adopt a market orientation tend to be more capable of iden-
tifying customer needs that are unmet in their industry and
respond by developing new products or services. They may
also enjoy greater elasticity from their marketing efforts
because there is less clutter for the new products or ser-

vices, providing a cost advantage for the pioneering market-
Market Orientation and Sustainable Competitive Advantage / 19
oriented firm. Over time, the acquired customers develop
switching costs, which lead to higher customer retention and
a differential advantage for the pioneering market-oriented
firm (Kerin, Varadarajan, and Peterson 1992).
However, a market orientation may also provide a
competitive advantage only as long as this capability is dis-
tinct in the market. The pioneering market-oriented firm’s
competitive advantage is ultimately contingent on its other
skills and resources (e.g., distribution capability, research-
and-development expertise), the competitors’ strategy, and
changes in the environment (Lieberman and Montgomery
1990). Firms that are later adopters of market orientation can
also learn from the pioneer’s mistakes and therefore be more
effective and efficient in (1) developing market-oriented
capabilities in their organizations and (2) responding to cus-
tomer needs.
Market orientation is an ongoing effort, and firms can
increase their level of market orientation in response to
competition or later adopters of market orientation. How-
ever, there is little guidance in the literature on whether
threshold effects to being market oriented exist. One view
on market orientation is that firms may narrowly define
existing customers as their served market, and in this case, a
market orientation may be detrimental to the firm. It is also
possible that, over time, as other firms adopt a market ori-
entation, market orientation transforms from being a suc-
cess provider to being a failure preventer (Varadarajan
1985). In other words, there may be thresholds beyond
which further focus on and improvements to market orien-
tation do not provide corresponding returns in profit and

sales. This diminishing effect may also arise when cus-
tomers begin to expect a certain level of product value and
service quality from market-oriented firms. This could lead
to a reduced marginal effect of market orientation on busi-
ness performance in the long run. Therefore, balancing the
positional advantages of the first (early) adopters of market
orientation and the capabilities and efficiencies that are pos-
sible for later adopters, we propose the following:
H1: The relationship between (a) market orientation and sales
and (b) market orientation and profit is initially positive,
but this effect decreases over time.
Day and Wensley (1988) purport that investigating the
moderating influence of the industry environment on a mar-
ket orientation–performance relationship is of paramount
importance, and thus marketing researchers have pursued
external environmental factors and acknowledged that they
can moderate market orientation’s effect on business perfor-
mance (Gatignon and Xuereb 1997; Greenley 1995; Grewal
and Tansuhaj 2001; Han, Kim, and Srivastava 1998;
Jaworski and Kohli 1993; Slater and Narver 1994; Voss and
Voss 2000). Similar to the main effects, previous research
has investigated only the short-term moderating effects of
environmental factors on a market orientation–business per-
formance relationship. We extend prior literature by provid-
ing theoretical arguments for the effects of environmental
conditions on a market orientation–performance relationship
over time. The moderators in our study follow the defini-
tions that Jaworski and Kohli (1993) posit.
Market orientation and market turbulence. Garnering
knowledge from retained customers about their preferences
(and needs) and maintaining a learning orientation are charac-

teristics of market-oriented organizations. When marketers
understand how much a given customer might be worth to
the organization over time, they can tailor the product/service
offering according to that customer’s changing needs and
requirements and still ensure an adequate lifetime return on
investment (Berger et al. 2002). Therefore, market-oriented
organizations are capable of better customer retention
(Narver, Jacobson, and Slater 1999). These resources lead
to better performance in the long run, especially in highly
turbulent markets in which customer preferences are con-
stantly changing.
Similar to the rationale for the main effects, we propose
that as more firms become market oriented, the capability
of a particular market-oriented organization is no longer
unique, because customers begin to expect a certain quality
of products and services from market-oriented firms. Fur-
thermore, the benefit market-oriented firms obtain in turbu-
lent markets is diminished when competitors are also mar-
ket oriented. Together, these effects lead to a diminishing
effect of market orientation on business performance over
time. As more firms in an industry become market oriented,
each of them is capable of delivering value and retaining
customers even when the customers’ needs are constantly
changing. Economic theory has found similar “stability in
competition” effects over time as markets reach equilibrium
(Hotelling 1929). Therefore, the moderating effect of mar-
ket turbulence is diminished over time. Although a market-
oriented firm still has better performance in markets with
greater turbulence than those that are more stable, this
incremental benefit decreases over time. Thus:
H2: Market turbulence positively moderates the relationship
between (a) market orientation and sales and (b) market
orientation and profit, but this positive moderating effect
diminishes over time.

Market orientation and technological turbulence. On
the basis of the theoretical arguments advanced in prior
research, we hypothesize that, initially (i.e., in the 1990s), a
high level of technological turbulence diminished the influ-
ence of market orientation on growth in sales and profit. In
markets with high technological turbulence, the characteris-
tics of products and services are largely determined by
innovations both within and outside the industry. In such
cases, a learning orientation and knowledge about customer
preferences do not necessarily contribute initially to long-
term performance. Before the late entrants also become
market oriented, technological turbulence is especially dis-
advantageous for the early adopters of market orientation
because the other firms are more receptive to technological
trends than market-oriented firms (Slater and Narver 1994).
However, as more firms become market oriented in an
industry, both the early and the late adopters are equally dis-
advantaged in markets with high levels of technological tur-
bulence. Although market-oriented firms perform worse in
markets with high technological turbulence than in those
with less volatility in technology, the disadvantage dimin-
ishes over time. Thus:
20 / Journal of Marketing, January 2011
H3: Technological turbulence negatively moderates the rela-
tionship between (a) market orientation and sales and (b)
market orientation and profit, but this negative moderating
effect diminishes over time.
Market orientation and competitive intensity. In the
absence of competition, customers are “stuck” with an orga-
nization’s products and services. In contrast, under conditions
of high competitive intensity, customers have many alterna-
tive options to satisfy their needs and requirements. Over

time, however, competitive intensity can enhance the effects
of market orientation on performance as market-oriented
firms in the same industry increase their capabilities and
processes (e.g., optimal resource allocation) to retain key
customers. In effect, this creates quasi “barriers to entry”
for other competing firms that are not market oriented.
Highly market-oriented firms are also uniquely capable of
responding to and preempting competitive threats in a
timely manner, which facilitates the attainment of higher
sales and profit. Thus, in highly competitive markets, the
companies with a greater market orientation are capable of
better performance.
However, the moderating effect of competitive intensity
decreases as more firms in an industry become market ori-
ented. In other words, the incremental benefit of being an
early adopter of market orientation decreases over time.
When the late entrants also become market oriented, every
firm is capable of understanding the strengths of its compe-
tition and anticipating competitive moves. This enables
each firm to provide differentiated value to its customers,
thus ensuring customer retention and profitability. This
notion implies that a high degree of competition equally
benefits all the firms in the industry. Therefore, the moder-
ating effect of competitive intensity should decrease over
time. Thus:
H4: Competitive intensity positively moderates the relation-
ship between (a) market orientation and sales and (b) mar-
ket orientation and profit, but this positive moderating
effect diminishes over time.
We submit these hypotheses to empirical tests using
panel data analytics on data gathered through multiple
sources. We used subjective and objective data to uncover
the effects of market orientation levels on short- and long-

term sales and profit.
Methodology
Measures
Market orientation and environmental moderators. We
measured market orientation and environmental moderators
using the scales Jaworski and Kohli (1993) developed. For
each component, we used the mean value of all the items
listed under the respective component for the analyses.
Business performance. Our study includes sales and net
income in a single study. Often, firms exhibit differential
effects on these two performance measures. We obtained
the objective measures of sales and net income (pure profit
after sales) from multiple sources, including annual reports;
publications, such as Beverage World and The Wall Street
Journal; and industry reports. We also obtained subjective
measures of performance on both net income and sales
from the responding firms. Following Jaworski and Kohli’s
(1993) approach, we measured subjective performance on a
five-point scale ranging from “excellent” to “poor.” The
items we used to measure subjective performance include
“Your overall performance of the firm/business unit with
respect to net income in the year … was?” and “Your over-
all performance of the firm/business unit relative to major
competitors with …
Integrating Customers in Product
Innovation: Lessons from Industrial

Development Contractors and
In-House Contractors in Rapidly
Changing Customer Marketscaim_555 89..106
Patricia Sandmeier, Pamela D. Morrison and
Oliver Gassmann
Successful product innovation has increasingly been recognized
as an outcome of integrating
customers into the new product development (NPD) process. In
this paper, we explore cus-
tomer integration by investigating the continual consideration of
customer contributions
throughout the product innovation process. Through a
comparison of the customer integration
practices by development contractors with those of in-house
developers, we find that the
iterative and adaptive innovation process structures of the
development contractors facilitate
the realization of the full customer contribution potential
throughout the product innovation
process. We also find additional support for the incorporation of
open innovation into an
organization’s NPD activities. Our findings are based on in-
depth case studies of the NPD
activities of in-house developers and product development
contractors.
1. Introduction
The positive impact of customer integrationon product
innovations has long been
acknowledged. Empirical research shows that
the integration of customer contributions in
new product development (NPD) leads to a
higher degree of product newness, reduced

innovation risks and more precision in
resource spending (Gupta, Raj & Wilemon,
1986; Kohli & Jaworski, 1990; Bacon et al.,
1994; Millson & Wilemon, 2002; Brockhoff,
2003; Callahan & Lasry, 2004). In particular,
the value of lead users has been demonstrated
by various researchers: the value of product
innovation increases when users bring their
specialized knowledge of needs, preferences
and solutions to NPD, leading to new prod-
ucts that provide true value to customers (von
Hippel, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1988; Herstatt & von
Hippel, 1992; Lilien et al., 2002; Morrison,
Roberts & Midgley, 2004; Lüthje, Herstatt &
von Hippel, 2005).
Most work in this field focuses on
approaches in which customer integration
stands for a better understanding of custom-
ers’ initial product requirements. These ap-
proaches include ‘market orientation’ (Kohli &
Jaworski, 1990; Atuahene-Gima, 1996), the
‘voice of the customer’ (Griffin & Hauser,
1993), the ‘virtual customer’ (Paustian, 2001;
Dahan & Hauser, 2002), ‘customer driven
innovation’ (Billington, 1998), or ‘consumers as
co-developers’ (Jeppesen & Molin, 2003). With
this understanding, the customers’ contribu-
tions can be brought into R&D directly or
through the marketing department to develop
new products that fit customers’ real needs
and wishes (von Hippel, 1978; Griffin & Page,
1996; Berry & Parasuraman, 1997; Dahan &
Hauser, 2002; von Hippel & Katz, 2002).
In this paper, we explore customer integra-

tion by investigating the continual consider-
ation of customer contributions throughout
the product innovation process. We compare
the practices of development contractors – i.e.,
professional technical service firms that
INTRGRATING CUSTOMERS IN PRODUCT INNOVATION
89
Volume 19 Number 2 2010
doi:10.1111/j.1467-8691.2010.00555.x
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
innovate on a contract basis – with that of
in-house developers. The technical service
firms develop new products with a very high
success rate but with different organizational
structures and processes compared to tradi-
tional in-house developers. We chose this com-
parison in order to reveal the factors on which
the development contractors’ success is based.
We find that their iterative and adaptive
innovation process structures facilitate the
realization of the full customer contribution
throughout the product innovation process.
The question of how customers can contrib-
ute to product innovation activities and how
and where their contribution can be built into
the NPD process to take advantage of the full
customer integration potential has not previ-
ously been addressed. We contribute to close a
theoretical gap by showing that a continuous

consideration of customer contributions
throughout the product innovation process
requires a recurring pattern of accessing,
releasing and absorbing customer contribu-
tions. This insight helps answer how innova-
tion capabilities from outside the R&D
department can be capitalized.
The paper is structured as follows: Section 2
provides the theoretical background from
existing literature; Section 3 develops the
framework which guides the comparison
between the practices applied by development
contractors with those of in-house developers;
Section 4 introduces our research methodol-
ogy; Section 5 presents the results from the
case study comparison, leading to four
research propositions; and in Section 6 we
discuss the implications of our research find-
ings. We conclude with limitations and recom-
mendations for further critical and practical
work.
2. Research Background
In environments where requirements can be
highly uncertain, changing customer needs
have to be faced for the development of indus-
trial products. Experimental NPD methodolo-
gies tolerating these changes were found to be
the only ones capable of bringing out innova-
tive new products in the required period of
time (Lynn, Morone & Paulson, 1996). Since
existing change-oriented approaches focus on
the ability to learn and share information
quickly (Zahay, Griffin & Fredericks, 2004), we

focus on organizational learning theory to
guide us as a theoretical starting point.
Organizational learning is defined as the
process of improving actions through better
knowledge and understanding (Fiol & Lyles,
1985). Applying this definition to the research
terrain of customer integration, learning from
customers throughout the development of
new products implies that the company learns
about its market through a series of sequential
information processing activities undertaken
with its customers (Kok, Hillebrand &
Biemans, 2003). Learning about markets for
new products can be understood as an organi-
zational learning process that involves the
acquisition, dissemination and utilization of
information (Fiol & Lyles, 1985; Imai, Ikujiro &
Takeuchi, 1985; Huber, 1991; March, 1991).
First, acquiring market information consists of
the collection of information about the needs
and behaviour of customers. Some of this
information can be obtained from data banks
and the results of past actions, whereas some
needs to be collected anew through quantita-
tive (e.g., market surveys) or qualitative (e.g.,
customer visits) methods (Adams, Day &
Dougherty, 1998). Second, market information
has to be disseminated across functions,
phases of the innovation process, geographic
boundaries and organization levels (Adams,
Day & Dougherty, 1998). Third, using market
information occurs in the process of learning
about the market for decision making, the
implementation of decisions, or evaluations of

a new product (Menon & Varadarajan, 1992).
We use the constructs from learning theory
– acquisition, dissemination and utilization –
to structure a literature review on integrating
customers into NPD.
Acquisition of Knowledge
To profit from customer know-how, this
know-how first has to be acquired. Literature
on integrating customers emphasizes the
choice of the right partner from whom the
required information can be obtained as a core
aspect of interacting with customers (Gruner
& Homburg, 2000). Biemans (1992) states that
the identity of the customers employed typi-
cally varies with the extent and intensity to
which the customer is involved, as it does with
the stage of the NPD process.
Gruner and Homburg (2000) identified
three different characteristics of valuable
co-operation partners for NPD: financial
attractiveness, closeness of customers and the
lead user characteristics. First, customers’
financial attractiveness relates to their repre-
sentativeness of the target market and their
reputation within that market (Ganesan, 1994).
The second characteristic is the closeness of the
relationship between the developing company
and the customer, including the level of
interaction outside the respective innovation
project and the duration of the business rela-
tionship (Doney & Cannon, 1997). Lead users,

90 CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT
as defined by von Hippel (1986, 1988),
combine two characteristics: they expect
attractive innovation-related benefits from a
solution to their needs and so are motivated to
innovate, and they experience needs for a
given innovation earlier than the majority of
the target market. Von Hippel (1986) proposed
and Urban and von Hippel (1988) tested the
proposition that idea-generation studies can
learn from lead users, both within and well
beyond intended target markets – lead users
found outside the target market often encoun-
ter even more extreme conditions on a trend
relevant to that target market. Their positive
impact on product innovations has since been
demonstrated by several studies (Herstatt &
von Hippel, 1992; Lilien et al., 2002; Lüthje &
Herstatt, 2004).
Dissemination of Knowledge
The imperative of opening up the NPD process
has been discussed within open innovation
research (Chesbrough, 2003; Gassmann, 2006).
This openness should enable organizations to
react to significant changes which occur in
rapidly changing markets in both customer
needs and technological potentials during the
NPD process. This can be done through

experimentation by providing toolkits (von
Hippel & Katz, 2002) or early versions of pro-
totypes of the product under development to
the customer for feedback on a regular basis
(Thomke, 1998, 2001).
Thomke’s work points out the relevance of
prototypes – or, more generally – the visual-
ization media for transferring the project to the
customer site and to release customers’ contri-
butions. Visualization through paper concepts,
mock-ups, rapid prototyping and computer
aided design can help in information sharing
and building consensus over the course of a
development project (Terwiesch & Loch, 2004;
Veryzer & Borja de Mozota, 2005). Physical
representation of the product under develop-
ment at different points of the NPD process
help to create a common understanding of
development issues which may arise accord-
ing to the different vocabularies and environ-
ments the involved stakeholders come from.
Utilization of Knowledge
The best possibility to utilize customer contri-
butions is generally seen in the early phases of
the product innovation process, the so-called
innovation front-end or product definition
phase (Murphy & Kumar, 1997; Kim &
Wilemon, 2002). Approaches such as the Stage-
Gate™ model of innovation (Cooper & Klein-
schmidt, 1986; Cooper, 1994) can be very
useful; however, they have not completely
captured the impact of dynamic user-oriented

activity throughout the NPD process (Veryzer
& Borja de Mozota, 2005). They do not provide
sufficient flexibility to respond to changing
information during a development project and
therefore are not able to ‘hit a moving target’
in conditions of high-velocity industries
(MacCormack, Verganti & Iansiti, 2001).
One way to realize flexible NPD is through
frequent iterations without forcing early
development in a wrong direction or restrain-
ing the customers to their initial inputs (Griffin
& Hauser, 1993). Multiple explorative devel-
opment iterations, complemented by exten-
sive testing, and frequent milestones help to
overcome the randomness through missing
technological and customer information
(Eisenhardt & Tabrizi, 1995; Terwiesch & Loch,
2004). Generally, development based on an
iterative process further suggests a more real-
time, hands-on approach to fast product devel-
opment, especially for uncertain products.
Lynn, Morone and Paulson (1996) demon-
strated that the realization of a process which
is able to continually consider new customer
input requires probing, testing and learning.
This implies a continuous interplay between
developers and customers of acquiring, dis-
seminating, utilizing, and re-acquiring new
customer contributions.
Analogies from Successful Practices:
Extreme Programming (XP)
In the search for analogies to flexible product

innovation approaches that successfully
manage the intersection of customers and
R&D, a solution emerges from Extreme Pro-
gramming (XP) in the software engineering
context. In XP’s product development method-
ology, the product innovation process is
organized to ensure a continual flow of high-
quality contributions from customers to the
development activities surrounding a new
product. While this approach and the underly-
ing agile project management practices have
received a high acceptance among software
engineers, the concept is less known in the
‘hardware world’ of new product creation. We
introduce the Extreme Programming method-
ology in the following as it will be used in
developing a framework for the investigation
of explorative (iterative) practices on integrat-
ing customers into the NPD process.
Extreme programming is one of the most
popular methods of agile software develop-
ment which refers to the low-overhead meth-
odologies developed for environments with
rapidly changing requirements. These meth-
odologies minimize risk by ensuring that soft-
91
ware engineers focus on smaller units of work

(Acebal & Cueva Lovelle, 2002). In agile soft-
ware development, collaboration with the cus-
tomer throughout the entire NPD process is
considered much more important than defin-
ing a development contract in advance, and
the overall goal is to provide a benefit for the
customer as soon as possible (Dornberger &
Habegger, 2004).
XP is shaped by the incremental, iterative
development of sequenced small release (pro-
totype) cycles, according to customers’ contri-
butions. This procedure minimizes the length
of the feedback cycles and helps reveal new
customer needs which were not previously
known by the customer himself. Empirical
research on decision making shows that
customers are frequently unaware of their
problem situations, underlying preferences,
problems and choice criteria (Simonson, 1993;
Mullins & Sutherland, 1998). Within the
releases, most design activities take place on
the fly and incrementally, starting with the
‘simplest solution that could possibly work’
and only then adding complexity.
In traditional software development
methods, such as the waterfall model for
example, first an extensive analysis regarding
all product requirements and project time and
scope are performed and only after this
first stage are the contributions from the
customer accessed and released, by translating
the requirements into planned product
specifications.

By contrast, XP’s iterative processes have
smaller steps and several iterations with
working releases in between, where customer
contributions are repeatedly accessed, released
and absorbed: access refers to developers inter-
acting with customers to obtain know-how,
release refers to making the customers’ know-
how visible to the developer, often in the
form of prototypes, and absorption refers to the
conversion and internalization of selected cus-
tomer contributions into the specific innova-
tion project. These terms are equivalent to the
acquisition, dissemination and utilization
stages in Learning Theory. The customer’s con-
tributions are implemented continuously with
the customer watching the new product evolve
according to his uncovered and released needs
and then making further contributions (Dorn-
berger & Habegger, 2004).
Since in XP the customer receives a physical
product element with each release, feedback is
provided not from his ability of imagination,
but rather the presence of intermediary results
enables him to become aware of his unan-
swered needs and requirements. As a result,
the customer contributes to determining the
new product’s scope and functionality at each
stage, instead of being contacted only for rel-
evance verification and design adjustment, as
is the case in traditional software development
and in most cases of industrial NPD.
While there are many benefits to the XP
method, its applicability for NPD is limited to

certain types of customer needs. That is, XP
can be applied only to R&D projects that do
not consist of complex technical constructs but
instead focus on developments that occur
close to the interface with the user of the
system. An example from software develop-
ment is in the elevator industry where XP is
not used to develop the technology for a new
elevator concept in which the basic needs still
consist of going up and down in a building
and opening the doors, but it is successfully
applied to develop new functionalities such as
floor access control by which the user is
directly affected.
3. Reference Framework for the
Continual Integration of Customers
in Industrial NPD
The exploration of XP points out the rel-
evance of a differentiated consideration of
accessing customer contributions, customer
contribution release and customer contribu-
tion absorption. This also supports a further
consideration of the three elements in organi-
zational learning theory where learning about
markets for new products can be understood
as a process of acquisition, dissemination and
utilization of information (see Section 2).
Following the structure of customer contri-
bution access, release and absorption, we
subsequently compare XP’s key elements of
integrating customers with the existing cus-
tomer integration literature. The presented
result is a set of constructs that serve as a ref-

erence framework which guided our explor-
ative investigation of the case studies.
Access to Customer Contributions
XP succeeds in discovering customer needs
and values by collecting customer contribu-
tions at the customer’s site and getting a low-
functionality version of the product into
customers’ hands at the earliest opportunity.
Therefore, closeness is crucial in XP, because
every finished release gets presented to the
customer in the form of a prototype. This pro-
cedure may be viewed as a method for rapidly
building and disseminating both explicit and
implicit market and technology know-how
among members of the development team and
the customer, which advances the project. Fur-
thermore, the customer has a fixed role in the
product development team, which also sup-
ports the closeness between developers and
the customer. In the literature, the closeness
factor has been mentioned as a means to build
and maintain trust (Anderson & Narus, 1990;
Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Buttle, 1996; Hutt &
Stafford, 2000; Rindfleisch & Moorman, 2001).
Therefore, developers and the customer
should interact as closely as possible and in the

case of ‘sticky’ information possibly even
transfer the development project to the cus-
tomer site (von Hippel, 1994).
The literature on customer integration into
product innovation further emphasizes the
characteristics of the customer involved, par-
ticularly in research on the lead user concept
(Herstatt & von Hippel, 1992; Lilien et al.,
2002; Morrison, Roberts & Midgley, 2004).
Other authors, such as Gruner and Homburg
(2000), showed that in addition to lead user
characteristics, criteria such as the representa-
tiveness of customers for the target market
and their reputation in those markets, as well
as the intensity of the interaction between the
manufacturer and customer beyond a par-
ticular project, can significantly discriminate
between better or worse performing products.
Martin and colleagues (Martin et al., 2003,
2004) emphasize that identifying the indi-
vidual within the customer organization with
the ability to fulfill the customer role in the XP
process represents a success factor. Therefore,
the specific person who contributes to the new
product under development is an important
factor, because he or she determines the role
played by the customer.
Release of Customer Contributions
Research on experimentation modes has high-
lighted the role of testing and experimentation
during the product innovation process (Simon,
1969; Allen, 1977; Wheelwright & Clark, 1992;

Iansiti, 1998; Thomke, 1998). Boehm, Gray and
Seewaldt (1984) found that a prototyping
process, which allows for changes late in the
design process according to new know-how
from and about customers, resulted in prod-
ucts that were not only judged superior from a
customer perspective but were also developed
with fewer resources.
First, XP’s multiple releases (comparable to
prototypes) help overcome the customer’s
design uncertainty and eliminate potential ex
post regrets. Second, the increased number of
releases provides the customer with more
options from which to choose and thus leads
to higher expected design quality, as has been
shown by Terwiesch and Loch (2004) in a pro-
totyping context. Furthermore, the releases
help reduce the customer’s uncertainty about
their own preferences and insecurity about the
producer’s ability to meet their specific needs.
Absorption of Customer Contributions
The striking element in XP’s product develop-
ment process is the planning activity, which is
reduced to a minimum for each release and
seems absent in terms of the overall project. In
the XP process, the customer contributes to the
planning process through regular feedback
after every release, which allows more precise
estimations of the resources required. These
improved estimations reduce the risk that rel-
evant functionalities might not be considered.
Another customer contribution comes from

the evaluation of the value of each user story,
so that the functionalities may be prioritized
according to their relevance.
Consequently, explanations of XP’s process
can be found in the research field of disci-
plined problem solving (Imai, Ikujiro & Takeu-
chi, 1985; Quinn, 1985) rather than in a stream
pertaining to rational planning (Myers &
Marquis, 1969), such as Cooper’s Stage-Gate™
process (Cooper, 1990, 1994, 2001). Delving
into the perspective of disciplined problem
solving, an explanation for the profitability of
XP’s process cycles can be found in the loose–
tight concept developed by Wilson (1966) and
Albers and Eggers (1991). Within each XP
release, in which chaotic trial-and-error devel-
opment is allowed, engineers can deploy their
full creativity, introduce new ideas, and focus
on developments that are technically possible.
However, the procedure of collecting cus-
tomer feedback occurs with a tight degree of
organization.
Therefore, developing a new product with
XP does not require control over the exact
course of a project in either the early or in the
late development phases. Instead, only some
activities are fixed, and developers can make
decisions over the course of their sequence
and adoption, depending on the specific situ-
ation and variables (Dornberger & Habegger,
2004).
Further Elements Relevant for the Reference
Framework

The foundation of XP’s product development
process is provided by short, highly efficient
development cycles of accessing, releasing
and absorbing customer contributions. Cus-
tomers assess the intermediary project results
continuously and enrich them with their feed-
back. This continuous interplay between
93
developers and customers has been addressed
in the literature by Lynn, Morone and Paul-
son’s (1996) probe-and-learn cycles. They state
that repeating the probing and learning helps
build new know-how, which leads to a supe-
rior new product that has been optimized in
terms of technical feasibility and fit with cus-
tomer needs. The success of such approaches is
seen in the increased likelihood of improved
project profitability through continuous guid-
ance of the development process by customer
requirements and through frequent cost and
benefit control which has also been discussed
from the perspective of total quality manage-
ment (TQM) (Kaulio, 1998). These advantages
exceed the costs arising from the provision of
multiple prototypes, and the number of devel-
opment projects that lead to failures in the
market can be reduced significantly (Acebal &

Cueva Lovelle, 2002).
In the following, we use the above dis-
cussed constructs as a benchmark, comparing
our data of in-house developers and develop-
ment contractors against the model using ana-
lytic induction (Yin, 1994).
4. Research Methodology
Due to the inductive nature of exploring itera-
tive customer integration in industrial NPD
we chose a qualitative case study approach to
gain a thorough understanding of the system
(Yin, 1994). We studied several cases in detail
to gain an in-depth understanding of their
natural setting, complexity and context (cf.
Punch, 1998).
The research consisted of three phases. In
the first phase a literature analysis was con-
ducted to explore the existing body of knowl-
edge on product innovation processes and
customer integration practices. In parallel, the
theoretical insights were validated in expert
workshops and contracted research projects
with industrial goods developers in Northern
Europe in order to find inconsistencies and
identify further research requirements which
are most relevant. This literature analysis and
practical reflection led to the theoretical base
which was introduced in Section 2.
The second phase developed a framework
(Section 3) containing the identified aspects
in the context of an extreme example of

experimental NPD, using the XP method
from software engineering as a foundation.
NPD with the XP method is extreme because
innovative customer know-how is extensively
utilized throughout the entire NPD process.
Because little is known about the XP method
in innovation research (the available literature
is limited to some practical guidelines), inter-
views were conducted with experienced soft-
ware engineers. These software engineers
work in software departments of the com-
panies considered in the first phase or
software institutions that specialize in the
application of XP (Object XP, Lifeware, FH
Zentralschweiz).
In the third phase the framework developed
with XP was applied to conduct the compari-
son between in-house developers and devel-
opment contractors. Contractors (professional
technical service firms) develop product inno-
vations with clients on a project basis – and
therefore with a different model of industrial
product development than the in-house devel-
opers. Both traditional in-house developers
and development contractors are included in
the research in order to cover a broad spec-
trum of industrial NPD settings and thus
allow us to investigate the successful applica-
tion possibilities of explorative iterative
practices.
Sample Selection
To gain insight we carried out an in-depth

analysis of selected projects and companies
(Stake, 1988; Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 1994). In
order to allow for a comparison within the
different development models, the investiga-
tion took place at the level of specific NPD
projects and their practices. We selected four
companies in which the product innovation
process could be studied comprehensively.
The criteria for selecting firms were based on
their potential for learning. We selected two
in-house developers: Hilti (Liechtenstein) and
Buechi Labortechnik (Switzerland) and two
development contractors: IDEO (Germany)
and Tribecraft (Switzerland). All firms cover
the complete spectrum from low- to high-tech.
Hilti was chosen due to its reputation as a
company that successfully practices a lead-
user approach. Buechi excels in its closeness to
customers (distributors) and users throughout
its product innovation process. As a result of
the authors’ close collaborations with this
company in previous research projects, we
could ensure access to sensitive customer
information and a broad data validation
process. IDEO – broadly investigated in NPD
literature – and Tribecraft engaged in very
tight collaborations with their customers and
have developed product innovations that stand
out in terms of their degree of novelty and
superior design. An overview of these four
companies is presented in Table 1.
Data Collection
In all phases, data were collected through per-
sonal, face-to-face interviews lasting between

T
ab
le
1.
O
ve
rv
ie
w
of
In
-D
ep
th
C
as
e
S
tu

dy
C
om
pa
n
ie
s
In
-h
o
u
se
d
ev
el
o
p
er
s
D
ev
el
o
p

m
en
t
co
n
tr
ac
to
rs
H
il
ti
B
u
ec
h
i
ID
E
O
T
ri
b
ec

ra
ft
B
ac
k
g
ro
u
n
d
in
fo
rm
at
io
n
M
an
u
fa
ct
u
re
r

w
it
h
in
-h
o
u
se
p
ro
d
u
ct
d
ev
el
o
p
m
en
t
(t
h
er

ef
o
re
re
fe
rr
ed
to
as
in
-h
o
u
se
d
ev
el
o
p
er
)
St
af
f

15
,0
00
R
&
D
p
o
rt
io
n
4.
5%
o
f
tu
rn
ov
er
T
ec
h
n
o

lo
g
y
in
te
n
si
ty
:
w
h
o
le
sp
ec
tr
u
m
,
fr
o
m
lo
w

5262020 Innovation Process Design Scoring Guidehttpsc.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to 5262020 Innovation Process Design Scoring Guidehttpsc.docx

Similar to 5262020 Innovation Process Design Scoring Guidehttpsc.docx (20)

More from fredharris32

More from fredharris32 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

5262020 Innovation Process Design Scoring Guidehttpsc.docx