FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON INNOVATION - THE CORRELATES OF INNOVATION IN THE MARKETING AND MANUFACTURING FUNCTIONS

This paper investigates innovation decisions in the manufacturing and marketing functions. Whereas it is expected that managers from diverse functional backgrounds evaluate innovation decisions differently, the re is little research that explores the theoretical linkage between in novation and the manager's functional background. A review of the exis ting literature on innovation yields a set of four propositions that h ave been tested previously in the literature. These propositions are c omplemented by two new propositions about the correlates of innovation in manufacturing and marketing. We propose that manufacturing manager s link their innovation decisions to their assessment of the product's uniqueness in comparison with competitors' products. In contrast, mar keting managers link their innovation decisions with the clarity of in novation objectives based on the customers' needs. The analysis of dat a from key informants in 172 firms was used to test the propositions. Whereas product uniqueness and clarity are significant correlates of i nnovation in the total sample, we found support for the proposition th at the manufacturing subgroup focuses more on product uniqueness while the marketing subgroup focuses more on clarity. These results contrib ute to our understanding of functional perspectives on innovation.