Generating New Product Ideas: An Initial Investigation of the Role of Market Information and Organizational Characteristics

Although product innovation is widely recognized as crucial to the success of organizations, the literature still contains certain gaps that limit our understanding of successful product innovation. These gaps include a lack or research employing a decompositional approach (i.e., analysis of the drivers at each stage of the process) to studying product innovation and a related lack of research investigating the effect of organizational characteristics on specific stages of the product innovation process. The authors attempt to close these gaps by developing and testing a model examining the moderating effects of organizational characteristics on the relationship between the amount of market information gathered and the number of new product ideas generated by work groups in organizations. The study findings provide insights into the types of organizational structure and climate characteristics that can have an impact on the relationship between amount of market information and new product idea generation.