Successful Industrial Product Innovation: An Integrative Literature Review

The 1980's information explosion on new-product development demands a broad-scope, up-to-date review of literature. Calantone and di Benedetto take on the task in this comprehensive annotated bibliography, citing more than 450 articles and books on product innovation and new product development. They have produced a thoroughly integrative review of marketing, business, and engineering literatures, identifying general managerial conclusions. Outlining key issues and problems faced by product managers, Calantone and di Benedetto determine to what extent these issues have been addressed in academic literature. How much of reported research is relevant? What is the quality of available scientific knowledge? Can business managers and marketing staffs learn from other functional areas, i.e. engineering or technical journals? This bibliography is a valuable entry into innovation literature for both product managers and academic researchers.

Calantone and di Benedetto's review is structured according to topic area: factors influencing product and process innovation; stages in new-product development; product diffusion forecasting; the R & D-marketing interface; organizational structure; and technology transfer. Each chapter includes a literature review and an extensive annotated bibliography. A representative set of articles from major marketing, business management, operations research, and engineering publications are selected. As a rule of thumb, articles from 1978 to the present are included. Several major works from earlier years are also cited. The authors complete this volume with their own observations and conclusions, an author index, and a subject index.