Insights and New Directions from Demand-Side Approaches to Technology Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management Research

Abstract

The authors review the progress of three rapidly growing macro management literatures-in technology innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategic management-that have in common the use of a "demand-side" research perspective. Demand-side research looks downstream from the focal firm, toward product markets and consumers, to explain and predict those managerial decisions that increase value creation within a value system. Typical characteristics of demandside, macro-level management research include clearly distinguishing value creation from value capture, emphasizing product markets as key sources of value-creation strategies for firms, viewing consumer preferences as dynamic and sometimes latent, and recognizing that managers' differing decisions in response to consumer heterogeneity contribute to firm heterogeneity and, ultimately, value creation. The authors review recent demand-side findings showing that strategies based on consumer heterogeneity can result in competitive advantage even if the firm holds only obsolete or mundane resources, these advantages can be sustainable without Acknowledgments: This article was accepted under the editorship of Talya N. Bauer. Our special thanks to the demand-side research authors who allowed us to use their working papers in this review.

Environmental technological innovation and market demand: is market orientation a missing link?

“…The detail reasons will be explainded in the later subsection. The study on demand-side factors as an emerging new research direction [6] and it effect on ET-innovation are important because of the following reasons.…”

“…(1) The body of knowledge of the demand-based perspective is relatively underexplored [7], the researches are dispersed and relatively less-known [6]. Many scholars may have overlooked the extent and importance of this research perspective since it is spanning wide across innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategy studies [6].…”

“…Many scholars may have overlooked the extent and importance of this research perspective since it is spanning wide across innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategy studies [6].…”

“…This is because, the demand-pull innovation research does not assume that customers' needs are constant as in technology-based innovation research; instead demand-based innovation research emphasize market change and market heterogeneity [6].…”

“…This paper will take a closer look into market demand effect on ET-innovation from the demand-based perspective. Demand-side view means works that looks downstream from the focal firm, toward product markets and consumers [6], [7] rather than upstream views that look into activities and internal capabilities of firms as the primary drivers of innovation [8].…”