Product Innovation in Marketing: Summary
Part I: Technology introduction
Chapter 1: Introducing product innovation in marketing
I. Innovation theory for marketing purposes
1.1 RATIONALE
Innovation theory = new approach for marketing
Traditionally, innovation theory employed by businesses/scholars to describe and understand
the extent to which innovations can be successfully managed and engaged within an
organization facing environmental changes, including:
- Innovation classifications (i.e., radical versus incremental)
- Diffusion of innovations
- Life cycle & adoption of innovations
Marketing theory = fuels innovation success
Businesses need marketing insights to manage emerging technologies (i.e. social media, AR,
AI, mobile apps…) that can address consumers’ desire to enjoy more engaging (shopping,
product/brand & service) experiences in omnichannel environments. However, this directly
implies many challenges:
- Select innovative efficient solutions/stimuli that fit consumers’ expectations and
organizational purposes.
- Designing new, more cost-effective, customized and superior customer experiences,
handling multiple channels
- Willingness to accept as a marketing focus should be extended to an innovation process
perspective.
1.2 APPROACHING THE FUTURE
> Biofeedback technologies: They encompass a range of tools and systems designed to
monitor and relay real-time information about an individual's psychophysiological state, including
direct brain activity, muscle tension, heart rate variability, electrodermal activity, and pupil size.
This feedback, often provided through visual, auditory, or tactile means, enables individuals to
gain conscious control over physiological functions that are typically autonomic or involuntary.
By interpreting these bodily signals, people can learn to regulate their own physical and mental
responses to stress, enhance relaxation, improve performance, and manage or treat various
health conditions. These technologies bridge the gap between the conscious mind and physical
1
,body, offering a powerful approach for enhancing personal health and well-being through
increased self-awareness and self-regulation.
> Neuromarketing: The intersection of marketing, economics, psychology, and neuroscience
through the development of more scientific measurements to be used by marketers to make
uncertain strategic decisions.
Examples of well-know uses of AI: Tesla, Netflix, Alexa, Siri
> Push marketing: Push marketing is a strategy that involves taking the product directly to the
customer via whatever means to ensure the customer is aware of your brand at the point of
purchase. It's about pushing products or services towards customers through advertising and
sales strategies that might include in-store promotions, direct selling, trade show presentations,
and targeted online or email campaigns. The goal is to create demand and encourage
immediate purchase by making sure the consumer is aware of the product at the moment they
are ready to buy.
> Pull marketing: Pull marketing, on the other hand, focuses on creating demand for a brand or
product through activities that draw consumers in. Instead of pushing the product towards
customers, pull marketing strategies aim to create a strong brand image and establish
consumer awareness that encourages customers to actively seek out the product or brand
themselves. This can be achieved through content marketing, SEO, social media engagement,
and word-of-mouth. The goal is to build loyalty and long-term demand, encouraging consumers
to come looking for your product or brand based on reputation or perceived value.
II. Innovation as a business process
Successful innovation = Clear marketing focus:
- Connection marketing and innovation as a business process
- A systemic and integrated approach
- Generating product-centered as well as market-centered insights
- Examples: Google AdSense, Toyota Prius, Nike+
Successful innovation = 2 key points:
- The capability of the organization to manage innovation
- Measuring innovation success in terms of technical resources, people, knowledge,
money,...
The importance of innovation for firms:
- Create customer and stakeholder value
- Develop a sustainable competitive advantage
2
, - Grow revenues and profits
Theoretical perspectives:
- Resource based view: Learning and innovation capability based on management of
information asymmetries of processes related to intangible resources (non-imitable)
useful to create differential value.
- Knowledge-based view (knowledge = strategic resources of the firm)
- Organizational learning through “routines” (i.e. repositories of knowledge)
- Individual differential resources need to be integrated on an organizational level
2.1 MANAGING INNOVATION
The innovation and creativity departments are closely related: if the technological environment
‘suggests’ the activation of the innovation process, then within the business the creativity of the
entrepreneur induces innovative methods in routine and in output. Within the business as a
system it develops a series of processes of creativity in innovation: the creativity would
represent the input and the innovation the output. This means: if the creativity (marketing
department) identifies a cognitive process that can generate new solutions, then the innovation
is the product of a complex cognitive process based on selection criteria.
The circularity of creativity-innovation, is based on a series of processes that allow the
entrepreneur to generate value for the firm through its routines. In particular:
- The process of generation: Creativity induces the entrepreneur to generate the
assumptions of action/ideas in response to the stress/stimuli (Idea generation).
- The process of selection: Evaluation and selection of ideas in terms of appropriateness
and feasibility.
- The process of developments: Implementing and translating ideas into tangible
outcomes that can enhance a firm's offerings, operations and strategies through
process and/or product innovations.
- The process of contamination: Innovative learning enhances the creative potential of
the firm of the firm, by fostering a culture of ongoing innovation and improvements
In companies the decision-making and
operational mechanisms are the result of
complex interactions between creative
subjects/objects and innovative objects/subjects
and that the relationship between creativity and
innovation must be considered in terms of
circular causality and not simply in terms of linear
causality.
3
, From a purely entrepreneurial point of view, innovation, producing new ideas or solutions,
makes challenge management possible, improving organizational efficiency and effectiveness.
This means that the application of an innovation requires greater specialization and therefore
contributes to creating firm fundamentals for a differential and sustainable competitive
advantage. -> Innovation, therefore, is a change in a product/service, in the production process,
in organizational roles and in the management or governance of firms.
The process of innovation and the innovation itself are key conditions for the development of
creative dynamics; these also represent the gap of innovation and of the innovation process.
According to this view, managing technology and innovation for marketing as a business
systems process means taking into account all the interactions amongst the integrated phases
that characterize the business system process itself and all the influences deriving from different
stakeholders.
1. Generic innovation process of firms
1. Searching: Scanning the environment
(internal and external) for, and processing
relevant signals about, threats and
opportunities for change.
2. Selecting: Deciding to which of these
signals to respond.
3. Implementing: Translating the potential in the trigger idea into something new and
launching it in an internal or external market. Making this happen requires the acquisition
of knowledge resources to enable the innovation, executing the project under conditions
of uncertainty, and launching the innovation into relevant internal or external markets.
4. Capturing value from the innovation: Sustaining adoption and diffusion and learning
from progressing through this cycle so that the organization can build its knowledge base
and can improve the ways in which the process is managed.
Despite the uncertain and apparently random nature of the innovation process, innovation is a
management question in the sense that there are choices to be made about resources and their
disposition and coordination. Successful innovation management is about building and
improving effective routines. It enhances ways of working and hence organizational culture
facilitating the circular process between creativity and innovation.
2. Core abilities in innovation
In developing these skills, an organization ensures
that the process of innovation is not casual but
continuous and sustainable. These routines need to
be integrated into broader core abilities that make
up an organizational capability in managing
innovation.
4
Part I: Technology introduction
Chapter 1: Introducing product innovation in marketing
I. Innovation theory for marketing purposes
1.1 RATIONALE
Innovation theory = new approach for marketing
Traditionally, innovation theory employed by businesses/scholars to describe and understand
the extent to which innovations can be successfully managed and engaged within an
organization facing environmental changes, including:
- Innovation classifications (i.e., radical versus incremental)
- Diffusion of innovations
- Life cycle & adoption of innovations
Marketing theory = fuels innovation success
Businesses need marketing insights to manage emerging technologies (i.e. social media, AR,
AI, mobile apps…) that can address consumers’ desire to enjoy more engaging (shopping,
product/brand & service) experiences in omnichannel environments. However, this directly
implies many challenges:
- Select innovative efficient solutions/stimuli that fit consumers’ expectations and
organizational purposes.
- Designing new, more cost-effective, customized and superior customer experiences,
handling multiple channels
- Willingness to accept as a marketing focus should be extended to an innovation process
perspective.
1.2 APPROACHING THE FUTURE
> Biofeedback technologies: They encompass a range of tools and systems designed to
monitor and relay real-time information about an individual's psychophysiological state, including
direct brain activity, muscle tension, heart rate variability, electrodermal activity, and pupil size.
This feedback, often provided through visual, auditory, or tactile means, enables individuals to
gain conscious control over physiological functions that are typically autonomic or involuntary.
By interpreting these bodily signals, people can learn to regulate their own physical and mental
responses to stress, enhance relaxation, improve performance, and manage or treat various
health conditions. These technologies bridge the gap between the conscious mind and physical
1
,body, offering a powerful approach for enhancing personal health and well-being through
increased self-awareness and self-regulation.
> Neuromarketing: The intersection of marketing, economics, psychology, and neuroscience
through the development of more scientific measurements to be used by marketers to make
uncertain strategic decisions.
Examples of well-know uses of AI: Tesla, Netflix, Alexa, Siri
> Push marketing: Push marketing is a strategy that involves taking the product directly to the
customer via whatever means to ensure the customer is aware of your brand at the point of
purchase. It's about pushing products or services towards customers through advertising and
sales strategies that might include in-store promotions, direct selling, trade show presentations,
and targeted online or email campaigns. The goal is to create demand and encourage
immediate purchase by making sure the consumer is aware of the product at the moment they
are ready to buy.
> Pull marketing: Pull marketing, on the other hand, focuses on creating demand for a brand or
product through activities that draw consumers in. Instead of pushing the product towards
customers, pull marketing strategies aim to create a strong brand image and establish
consumer awareness that encourages customers to actively seek out the product or brand
themselves. This can be achieved through content marketing, SEO, social media engagement,
and word-of-mouth. The goal is to build loyalty and long-term demand, encouraging consumers
to come looking for your product or brand based on reputation or perceived value.
II. Innovation as a business process
Successful innovation = Clear marketing focus:
- Connection marketing and innovation as a business process
- A systemic and integrated approach
- Generating product-centered as well as market-centered insights
- Examples: Google AdSense, Toyota Prius, Nike+
Successful innovation = 2 key points:
- The capability of the organization to manage innovation
- Measuring innovation success in terms of technical resources, people, knowledge,
money,...
The importance of innovation for firms:
- Create customer and stakeholder value
- Develop a sustainable competitive advantage
2
, - Grow revenues and profits
Theoretical perspectives:
- Resource based view: Learning and innovation capability based on management of
information asymmetries of processes related to intangible resources (non-imitable)
useful to create differential value.
- Knowledge-based view (knowledge = strategic resources of the firm)
- Organizational learning through “routines” (i.e. repositories of knowledge)
- Individual differential resources need to be integrated on an organizational level
2.1 MANAGING INNOVATION
The innovation and creativity departments are closely related: if the technological environment
‘suggests’ the activation of the innovation process, then within the business the creativity of the
entrepreneur induces innovative methods in routine and in output. Within the business as a
system it develops a series of processes of creativity in innovation: the creativity would
represent the input and the innovation the output. This means: if the creativity (marketing
department) identifies a cognitive process that can generate new solutions, then the innovation
is the product of a complex cognitive process based on selection criteria.
The circularity of creativity-innovation, is based on a series of processes that allow the
entrepreneur to generate value for the firm through its routines. In particular:
- The process of generation: Creativity induces the entrepreneur to generate the
assumptions of action/ideas in response to the stress/stimuli (Idea generation).
- The process of selection: Evaluation and selection of ideas in terms of appropriateness
and feasibility.
- The process of developments: Implementing and translating ideas into tangible
outcomes that can enhance a firm's offerings, operations and strategies through
process and/or product innovations.
- The process of contamination: Innovative learning enhances the creative potential of
the firm of the firm, by fostering a culture of ongoing innovation and improvements
In companies the decision-making and
operational mechanisms are the result of
complex interactions between creative
subjects/objects and innovative objects/subjects
and that the relationship between creativity and
innovation must be considered in terms of
circular causality and not simply in terms of linear
causality.
3
, From a purely entrepreneurial point of view, innovation, producing new ideas or solutions,
makes challenge management possible, improving organizational efficiency and effectiveness.
This means that the application of an innovation requires greater specialization and therefore
contributes to creating firm fundamentals for a differential and sustainable competitive
advantage. -> Innovation, therefore, is a change in a product/service, in the production process,
in organizational roles and in the management or governance of firms.
The process of innovation and the innovation itself are key conditions for the development of
creative dynamics; these also represent the gap of innovation and of the innovation process.
According to this view, managing technology and innovation for marketing as a business
systems process means taking into account all the interactions amongst the integrated phases
that characterize the business system process itself and all the influences deriving from different
stakeholders.
1. Generic innovation process of firms
1. Searching: Scanning the environment
(internal and external) for, and processing
relevant signals about, threats and
opportunities for change.
2. Selecting: Deciding to which of these
signals to respond.
3. Implementing: Translating the potential in the trigger idea into something new and
launching it in an internal or external market. Making this happen requires the acquisition
of knowledge resources to enable the innovation, executing the project under conditions
of uncertainty, and launching the innovation into relevant internal or external markets.
4. Capturing value from the innovation: Sustaining adoption and diffusion and learning
from progressing through this cycle so that the organization can build its knowledge base
and can improve the ways in which the process is managed.
Despite the uncertain and apparently random nature of the innovation process, innovation is a
management question in the sense that there are choices to be made about resources and their
disposition and coordination. Successful innovation management is about building and
improving effective routines. It enhances ways of working and hence organizational culture
facilitating the circular process between creativity and innovation.
2. Core abilities in innovation
In developing these skills, an organization ensures
that the process of innovation is not casual but
continuous and sustainable. These routines need to
be integrated into broader core abilities that make
up an organizational capability in managing
innovation.
4
