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 of research employing a decompositional approach (i.e., analysis of the dri vers at each stage of the process) to studying product innovation and a rel ated lack of research investigating the effect of organizational characteri stics on: specific stages of the product innovation process. The authors at tempt to close these gaps by developing and testing a model examining the m oderating effects of organizational characteristics on the relationship bet ween the amount of market information gathered and the number of new produc t ideas generated by work groups in organizations. The study findings provi de insights into the types of organizational structure and climate characte ristics that can have an impact on the relationship between amount of marke t information and new product idea generation.