Article 1

Question 1

What is Hillebrand, Bas, Ron G.M. Kemp, and Edwin J. Nijssen (2011) Customer orientation and future market focus in NSD about?

Answer 1

This study aims to investigate the differential effects of customer orientation and future market focus, through a firm’s inertia forces, on firm innovativeness in the B2B context for small and medium enterprises (SME’s) involved in new service development

Question 2

What is market focus?

Answer 2

Focus on emerging needs and wants in the markteplace

Question 3

What is inertia?

Answer 3

Inertia concerns a firm’s reluctance to change; a firm’s lack of willingness to cannibalize sales, routines, and prior investments which have been shown to be important determinants of innovativenetss

Question 4

What is firm innovativeness?

Answer 4

The degree to which a firm develops innovative new products and services on a regular basis; the degree to which a firm turns out products that are radically different and depart from existing offerings, compared to their competitors

Question 5

What is customer orientation?

Answer 5

The degree to which a firm believes it should try to understand and satisfy current customers’ needs and wants; can lead to inertia

Question 6

What is future market focus?

Answer 6

A firm’s predisposition and openness to new market trends and business models; prevents a firm from becoming inert & myopic; puts requests from current customers into perspective by directing attention toward new trends in the marketplace at large; proactive (as opposed to reactive)

Question 7

What two mechanisms influence firm innovativeness and reliably relate to them being able to take advantage of new tech and trends?

Answer 7

1) Service (or products) R&D and 2) Path dependency theory

Question 8

What is Path Dependency Theory?

Answer 8

Path Dependency Theory emphasizes a social mechanism rooted in organizational inertia, specifically the lack of willingness to cannibalize

Question 9

What does cannibalize mean, in the sphere of marketing?

Answer 9

Cannibalizing refers to the extent to which a firm is prepared to reduce the actual or potential value of its investment

Question 10

What 3 dimensions are involved in the willingness to cannibalize (or not to)?

Answer 10

1) reluctance to cannibalize sales of current services (or products), 2) reluctance to cannibalize current organizational routines, and 3) reluctance to cannibalize prior investments

Question 11

What are the managerial implications in Hillebrand, Bas, Ron G.M. Kemp, and Edwin J. Nijssen (2011) “Customer orientation and future market focus in NSD”?

Answer 11

1) mangers planning on improving organization’s abilities to develop radical innovations should focus not only on existing customers, but also future ones, 2) managers should implement qualitative market research techniques as large surveys do not pick up on new trends, and 3) co-creation with customers is a useful tactic and should include current customers AND lead users

Question 12

What are some theoretical implications in Hillebrand, Bas, Ron G.M. Kemp, and Edwin J. Nijssen (2011) Customer orientation and future market focus in NSD?

Answer 12

• Customer-oriented firms are more likely to communicate w/ current customers who have homogeneous rather than heterogeneous knowledge, which fosters incremental but not radical innovation
• In contrast to expectations, customer orientation doesn’t have a significant effect on willingness to cannibalize routines (perhaps because this doesn’t directly affect the current customer’s way of working with the firm)
• There is a lack of willingness to cannibalize sales on firm innovativeness; this may be due to service development largely dealing with developing and prerequisites for a service rather than the service itself
• Hardware (investments) and software (capabilities) may be more important than the fact that radical new services may make previous services and the resulting sales obsolete
• A proactive stance towards the market is beneficial to innovativeness
  o Ie. having the firm drive the market rather than having the market (customers) drive the firm
• Firm behavior is the result of how firms channel and distribute the attention of their decision-makers
  o Suggest that top management has an important role to play in focusing employee attention on future market developments and discovering & responding to latent (future) customer needs
• Both radical & incremental new services are needed for a firm to perform well in the long-term, authors suggest focusing on both current customers and future ones