Impact of Knowledge Type and Strategic Orientation on New Product Creativity and Advantage in High‐Technology Firms

Abstract

As different types of knowledge may have different effects on new product positional advantage, knowledge portfolio management in concert with the firm's strategic orientation is indispensable for new product success. However, previous research has not dealt with the knowledge resources and strategic implementations that affect new product development (NPD). To fill in this gap, the current study focuses on two dimensions of knowledge type (knowledge complexity and knowledge tacitness) and two forms of strategic orientation (technological orientation and market orientation), which influence the positional advantages as determinants of NPD outcomes. Drawing on the resource‐based view, this study explains how these knowledge and strategic orientation variables influence new product creativity, which comprised the novel and meaningful characteristics of new products. Finally, it demonstrates how these two dimensions of new product creativity differentially provide product advantages in terms of customer satisfaction and product differentiation, which lead to superior new product performance. A conceptual framework is developed and the related hypotheses provided to incorporate the study variables and to test their relationships in a sample based on data collected from both marketing and project managers from 100 U.S. high‐technology firms. The model estimation results from path analysis demonstrate that reliance on knowledge of high tacitness harms meaningfulness, while reliance on knowledge of high complexity increases both novelty and meaningfulness of new product. As expected, market orientation and technological orientation improve the meaningfulness and novelty dimensions of the new product, respectively. New product novelty and meaningfulness are shown to enhance new product advantage in terms of product differentiation and customer satisfaction, both of which contribute to new product performance. It is also found that the combinative use of market orientation and knowledge complexity, and technological orientation and knowledge tacitness positively influence both the novelty and meaningfulness of new products. This study, using the product‐level analysis, contributes to the literature by clarifying how the firm's different knowledge properties and strategic orientations both play a role as a source of new product creativity, and how new product creativity, as a valuable and rare resource, enhances new product advantage. The study results suggest that project/product managers should increase the transferability and codifiability of unstructured knowledge by stimulating intraorganizational knowledge sharing among NPD team members, and that they should promote both technology and market‐orientated practices to fully develop creativity of new products.

Paths and Challenges of New Technologies: The Case of Nanotechnology-Based Cosmetics Development in Brazil

“…The technological novelty embraces new technological knowledge and the search for new possibilities (Kim et al 2013). This is the dominant method in science-oriented firms (Stefik and Stefik 2004).…”

“…In the exploitative, learning focuses on improving and extending the information that has already been acquired, improving cost-effectiveness (Kim and Atuahene-Gima 2010) and quality (Molina-Castillo et al 2011) of the products. These approaches improve product satisfaction (Kim et al 2013). The strong market orientation allows firms to be better suited to the activities of the marketing mix.…”

“…This search could be by technology (technology scanning) or by market information (commercial scanning) or both (Stefik and Stefik 2004;Jeong et al 2006;Kim et al 2013). Therefore, the novelty depends on the nature of the content that will be incorporated into the new product-technological, marketing or both.…”

Os Motivos das Relações entre Orientação para Mercado, Orientação para Aprendizagem e Sucesso de Novos Produtos

“…Neste contexto, a comunidade acadêmica tem buscado compreender qual a melhor maneira de conquistar uma vantagem competitiva sustentável (e.g., Gutiérrez, Fuentes, & Ariza, 2014). Um argumento de destaque neste panorama, associado à visão baseada em recursos, diz respeito à capacidade das empresas administrarem o conhecimento e a orientação estratégica, de forma a contribuir, através do desenvolvimento de novos produtos, para a criação de uma posição sustentável no mercado (Kim, Im, & Slater, 2013).…”

Antecedents and outcomes of breadth and depth of absorptive capacity: An empirical study

“…R&D expenditure was measured by three items adopted from Kim, Im, and Slater (2013). Five ranges, from below 20 to above 1,000, measured size.…”