Inventions and Innovations: Does Stage of Development Matter in Assessments of Market Attractiveness?

The purpose of this study is to determine whether market attractiveness is affected by the product\u27s developmental stage-specifically, invention vs. innovation. Two databases were combined for this study to assess prototype or market-ready products (innovations) and ideas submitted by inventors and manufacturers (inventions). On average, invention stage products were more attractive to evaluators than were innovation stage products; however, one critical factor - the ability to create a new venture from the product - was significantly higher for innovations. In addition, overall market readiness was on average more than 10 percent higher for innovation stage products than those at the invention stage. Stepwise regression results indicate that stage of development and new venture likelihood are more critical than other factors in deciding the market viability of a product

How Product Development Influences Product Evaluation

New product development and evaluation is a part of the modern marketplace, and the need for independent third-party evaluations of new products is already established. This study examines how these types of evaluators view the similarities and differences between goods at three levels of product development: invention, innovation and commercialization. Using an instrument created by Udell, O’Neill, and Baker (1977), the authors find that 28 of 39 criteria are able to correctly classify almost 95 percent of the study’s cases and that these criteria can be grouped into seven factors describing both the potential downside of product acceptance and the skills needed to establish a product on the market. These 28 criteria seem to be assessed in a similar manner by evaluators, at least in part, with stage of development in mind, and the evaluator\u27s ratings indicate commonalities between products at these three levels in terms of product and firm quality