To serve or create? Strategic orientations toward customers and innovation

This article reviews a central tension in management-the relationship betwe en customers and innovation. It explores the contrast between serving and c reating customers and examines the sometimes uneasy relationship between an innovation orientation and a customer orientation. From this discussion, t he article develops a model that provides an inclusive paradigm of the diff erent strategies that firms have used to resolve the tension and explores t he dynamics of the change process for several well-known companies. It conc ludes by developing the managerial implications of the model, with a partic ular emphasis on how new technology is changing the desirability of alterna tive strategies.