How Today’s Consumers Perceive Tomorrow’s Smart Products

This manuscript investigates consumer responses to new smart products. Due to the application of information technology, smart products are able to collect, process and produce information, and can be described to ‘think’ for themselves. In this study, consumers respond to smart products that are characterized by two different combinations of smartness dimensions. One group of products shows the smartness dimensions of autonomy, adaptability and reactivity. Another group of smart products are multifunctional and can cooperate with other products. We measure consumer responses to these smart products in terms of the innovation attributes of relative advantage, compatibility, observability, complexity and perceived risk. A study among 184 consumers shows that products with higher levels of smartness are perceived to have both advantages and disadvantages. Higher levels of product smartness are mainly associated with higher levels of observability and perceived risk. The effects of product smartness on relative advantage, compatibility and complexity vary across product smartness dimensions and across product categories. For example, higher levels of product autonomy are perceived as increasingly advantageous while a high level of multifunctionality is perceived disadvantageous. The paper discusses the advantages and pitfalls for each of the five product smartness dimensions and their implications for new product development (NPD). The manuscript concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the study and it provides suggestions for further research

The Mediating Effect of NPD-Activities and NPD-Performance on the Relationship between Market Orientation and Organizational Performance

Empirical research has demonstrated that a market orientation has in general a positive effect on organizational performance. The potential benefits of a market orientation have, however, not been realized because academics and practitioners do not yet understand the modus operandi that transform market orientation into superior organizational performance. Recent research has demonstrated that the proficiency in new product development (NPD) activities might be the key in the conversion of market orientation into superior NPD-performance, and hence, organizational performance. This study is designed to test a set of hypotheses related to the interrelationships among market orientation, the proficiency in NPD-activities, NPD-performance, and organizational performance. The results from a sample of 126 manufacturing firms in the Netherlands present evidence for the mediating role of the proficiency in several NPD-activities and NPD-performance in the relationship between market orientation and organizational performance. The fact that this mediating role has been found thus provides a better understanding of how market-oriented behaviors are transformed into superior value for customers

Business experiments for circular urban food systems

The food sector causes around 30% of global life cycle environmental impacts, mostly due to dairy and meat production and consumption. These impacts can be reduced through systemic innovation in how people relate to food, and consequently how and what they choose to eat (Tukker et al. 2011). New businesses are emerging that address sustainable food challenges, to reduce waste, water, energy use, and carbon emissions associated with food. ‘The New Farm’ is a recently established food innovation hub in the city of The Hague that has hosted a number of these emerging businesses. Examples include: Urban Farmers, a large aquaponics farm for circular vegetable and fish production; Haagse Zwam, which uses waste from coffee grounds to grow oyster mushrooms; UpTown Greens, which provides vertical farm units to restaurants. The New Farm is located in a low-income district and seeks to involve the local neighborhood as a focus use case. The hub is loca- ted in an old, refurbished industrial building. At the point of writing, it is at the beginning of its operations, with last constructions to create space for multiple restaurants to settle in the ground floor of the building. We seek to answer the following question: How can a local innovation hub serve to engage organisations in joint business experiments to design circular urban food systems? This question is based on two insights from the field of sustainable inno- vation. First, any innovation activity for sustainability needs to look at multiple levels (e.g. products, business models and systems), with special attention to systemic levels (Ceschin and Gaziulusoy 2016). This is because sustainability problems can only be addressed through the connections and interactions between, for example, people, organisations, products and ser- vices (Meadows 1997; Boulton et al. 2015). The circular economy provides a useful narrative for such systemic innovation (Blomsma and Brennan 2017). It suggests that organisations jointly minimise a system’s resource inputs, as well as its waste and emission outputs. This can be done by narrowing (use less), slowing (use longer) and closing (use again) resource loops (Geissdoerfer et al. 2017). Second, while a lot research has been about ‘what’ is necessary (e.g. minimise negative environmental impacts), and ‘why’ (e.g. safeguarding welfare for coming generations), less is known about ‘how’ effective change can be created (Zollo et al. 2013). Conducting business experiments has been promoted as an actionable process for ‘how’ this can be done for circular economy (Bocken et al. 2016; Bocken et al. 2018). It works as follows: come up with new ideas, select the ‘best’ idea, and then get out of the building as quickly as possible to test critical assumptions about its desirability, viability and fea- sibility at the lowest possible cost and the least amount of time. Key here is to rapidly go through ‘build-measure- learn’ cycles to learn whether an idea works or not, and iterate or pivot after each cycle (Ries 2011; Osterwalder et al. 2014). Conducting business experiments on a systems level requires a few additio- nal considerations. First, they require open project structures and time to de- velop a shared vision among involved people and organisations (Konietzko et al. 2018). Second, they ideally focus on one location, one use case and one initial customer, while they also test the adaptability of value propositions to other contexts (e.g. other customers, locations, and use cases) (ibid.). The hub is a purposed case that can enable systemic and collaborative bu- siness experiments. It focuses on one location and one use case. However, the tenants in the hub have not yet established a project structure for joint experiments or a shared vision. This is the starting point for our research. We use four steps to explore the question: 1) 10 interviews with tenants and partners, 2) informal get-togethers between tenants, 3) business experiment design, 4) business experiment sprints with tenants. First interviews have revealed individual interests and the willingness for joint action. First infor- mal get-togethers have helped identify common interests. Going forward, we seek to integrate this with a method for workshops to create a shared vision and conduct business experiments together with the tenants to an- swer the question

Product Intelligence: Its Conceptualization, Measurement and Impact on Consumer Satisfaction

In the last decade, companies have developed a large number of intelligent products. Due to the use of information technology, these products, for example, are able to work autonomously, cooperate with other products, or adapt to changing circumstances. Although intelligent products appear an attractive category of products, they have received little attention in the literature. The present article provides a conceptualization of the new construct of product intelligence and describes the development procedure of a measure for the construct. In addition, the article sets up and empirically tests a conceptual framework in which product intelligence leads to consumer satisfaction through the innovation attributes of relative advantage, compatibility, and complexity. Managerial implications for new product development and marketing of intelligent products are considered and suggestions for further research provided

Understanding a Two-Sided Coin: Antecedents and Consequences of a Decomposed Product Advantage

This article investigates the antecedents and consequences of two product advantage components: product meaningfulness and product superiority. Product meaningfulness concerns the benefits that users receive from buying and using a new product, whereas product superiority concerns the extent to which a new product outperforms competing products. The authors argue that scholars and managers should make a deliberate distinction between the two components because they are theoretically distinct and also have different antecedents and consequences. The authors collected data through an online survey on 141 new products from high-tech companies located in the Netherlands. The results reveal that new products need to be meaningful as well as superior to competing products in order to be successful. This finding is consistent with the prevailing aggregate view on product advantage in the literature. However, the results also show that the effects of the two components on new product performance are moderated by market turbulence. Although each component is important in that it forms a necessary precondition for the other to affect new product performance under circumstances of moderate market turbulence, meaningfulness is most important for new product performance in turbulent markets where preferences have not yet taken shape. In contrast, when markets become more stable, the uniqueness of meaningful attributes decreases and new products that provide advantage by fulfilling their functions in a way that is superior to competing products are more likely to perform well. In addition, the study shows that the firm’s customer and competitor knowledge processes independently lead to product meaningfulness and superiority, respectively. The findings also reveal that under conditions of high technological turbulence, the customer and competitor knowledge processes complement each other in creating product meaningfulness and superiority. This implies that the level of technological turbulence puts requirements upon the breadth of firms’ market knowledge processes in order to create a new product with sufficient advantage to become successful. The authors conclude that neglecting the distinction between product meaningfulness and superiority when assessing a new product’s advantage may lead to an incomplete insight on how firms can improve the performance of their new products

Exploration and exploitation activities for design innovation

This paper focuses on design innovation: that is, the development of products that are new in terms of products’ appearance, the emotions products evoke, and/or the way they enable customers to express their identity. Although prior research acknowledges the importance of design innovation for product and organisational performance, studies on how to manage design innovation are relatively scarce. The present study attempts to fill this gap by investigating design innovation and its management in terms of the degree of exploration and exploitation activities and designers’ decision freedom when developing new offerings. We collected data on projects in which external design consultancies were actively involved during the development process (n = 83). For each project, we surveyed both the external senior designer a