Juho-Petteri Huhtala

Market orientation, innovation capability and business performance: Insights from the global financial crisis

Purpose - The paper aims to examine the role of market orientation (MO) and innovation capability in determining business performance during an economic upturn and downturn. Design/methodology/approach - The data comprise two national-level surveys conducted in Finland in 2008, representing an economic boom, and in 2010 when the global economic crisis had hit the Finnish market. Partial least square path analysis is used to test the potential mediating effect of innovation capability on the relationship between MO and business performance during economic boom and bust. Findings - The results show that innovation capability fully mediates the performance effects of a MO during an economic upturn, whereas the mediation is only partial during a downturn. Innovation capability also mediates the relationship between a customer orientation and business performance during an upturn, whereas the mediating effect culminates in a competitor orientation during a downturn. Thus, the role of innovation capability as a mediator between the individual market-orientation components varies along the business cycle. Originality/value - This paper is one of the first studies that empirically examine the impact of the economic cycle on the relationship between strategic marketing concepts, such as MO or innovation capability, and the firms business performance.

Market Orientation and Innovation in Dynamic Competitive Markets

Market orientation is a source of sustainable competitive advantage in static markets. When competition in the markets becomes more dynamic, sustaining a competitive advantage is challenging. Consequently, sustainable competitive advantage may merely be achieved by concatenating the temporal advantages emerging in the market. In order to obtain temporal competitive advantages, the potential of market orientation is deployed through strategic capabilities and actions. While the extant research has focused on examining the relationship between market orientation and inter-firm capabilities, little attention has been given to competitive actions, particularly in dynamic contexts. In this study, the authors examine the relationship between market orientation, innovation actions, and business performance. Specifically, the focus of innovation actions is on product innovation aggressiveness since it represents the competitive action domain of innovativeness. An analysis of 181 firms across various industries in competitive dynamic environment reveals the important role of competitive aggressiveness in a firm’s new product-related actions. Moreover, to be able to leverage product innovation aggressiveness for superior business performance within a dynamic competitive environment, the firm benefits tremendously from having a market-oriented culture in place. Market orientation plays an important role in accelerating product innovation aggressiveness, especially when the rate of technological change is low.

Business Model Convergence and Divergence in Publishing Industries

Digitalization of information has led publishers to contemplate how to innovate new business models for their media services. This article discusses the evolution of media business models by revealing their convergence and divergence. The study proposes and uses a framework for analyzing business model evolution in three publishing industries in Finland; books, newspapers, and magazines. The framework is based on two dimensions: the organizational goal for business model change and the strength of belief systems. It offers a tool that helps managers at publishers and other media companies develop their business models by focusing not only on material aspects of business model, such as the ecosystem and revenue logic, but also on belief systems. Publishers face competition by entrants from other industries and the emergence of practices that are reconfigured and shared across diverse publishing industries. We suggest that managers need to review their belief systems that either enable or prevent the development of novel media business models.

Customer Empowerment, Top Management Team and Product Development: Success Paths in Turbulent Markets

Customer knowledge has been identified as a key condition for product development success. Traditionally customer knowledge is generated through market research techniques like focus groups and surveys. It has been argued that product development success in today’s dynamic markets requires a shift from traditional market research to increased emphasis on customer empowerment. This is the direct, persistent and interactive collaboration with the customers. It has been postulated, that involving customers in closer proximities to product development project thresholds will generate novel product ideas that are more likely to be valued by customers, thus increasing the likelihood of product development success. Additionally, it has been noted that customer empowerment activities have the propensity to improve product quality and reduce risk. When a firm decides to implement activities of customer empowerment, it needs to be geared to appropriately manage these interactions and the various forms of information that these are intended to bring about. It is at this stage where the actions of the top management team (TMT) of the firm are crucial in terms of making the strategic decisions that guide product development.

BARRIERS TO INNOVATION DIFFUSION IN INDUSTRIAL NETWORKS : A SYSTEMATIC COMBINING APPROACH

Over the past 50 years, a substantial interest has been put to research on how innovation spreads within social networks over time (see Rogers, 1962, 2010). Our initial aim was to examine innovation diffusion in industrial networks. We operationalized the research through a case study of an advertising network by using systematic combining as the approach (Dubois & Gadde, 2002, 2014). From the initial focus of innovation diffusion, the rematching of data and theory led us to focus on the barriers of innovation diffusion. By doing so, we found out that multilevel strategizing appears to be an important phenomenon in understanding dynamics of innovation diffusion within industrial networks. Specifically, strategizing occurs in two levels: (1) the groups within the network compete for position, and (2) actors within a group compete for position by trying to differentiate themselves from other group actors. A strategic mismatch between the two levels leads the network to become decelerated or even static in diffusing new innovations (Abrahamsen, Henneberg, & Naude, 2012). Uncovering these findings would not have been possible without the use of systematic combining and the constant matching between theoretical and empirical domains.

Evolution of NPD during industry life-cycles - a longitudinal study from the telecom industry

Studies on new product development (NPD) have largely focused on finding antecedents for successful NPD. Various external and internal factors have been suggested as driving NPD success. Specifically, NPD research stream is focused on examining the impact of three factors, which are NPD process formality, internal cross-functional collaboration and external firm-to-firm collaboration. However, understanding how the drivers of successful NPD change during industry life-cycles is still inconclusive. This research aims to bridge this gap by examining these success factors during the different stages of an industry life-cycle. Through an historical study that spans 30 years, the current research highlights how the NPD projects of a single telecom firm change during the evolution of the telecom industry. The research utilizes event structure analysis (ESA) in conjunction with qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to uncover the changing configurations of NPD performance. The findings of this research highligh...