Innovation Strategies in New Product Development : Balancing Technological, Marketing and Complementary Competencies of a Firm

Innovation remains to be the widely recognized leverage in the quest for future growth. This book presents a model of technological, marketing and complementary competencies in relation to firms' innovative performance, drawing from a study of medium and large-sized Slovenian manufacturing enterprises. Distinctions are made between firms which are technology leaders and those being technology followers. Companies employ different combinations of competencies depending on the innovation strategy they pursue in new product development, namely incremental innovation strategy, radical innovation strategy and trend-setting strategy. The implications of the findings are valuable to the firms aligning their competencies with their strategy, as well as to policy makers in technology following countries.