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Call for Papers
Industrial Marketing Management
Special issue on Market innovation processes
Submission deadline Dec. 15th, 2012

While innovation processes in principle are recognized to have both a technological and a market dimension (Abernathy and Clark 1985), and despite Schumpeter’s (1934) explicit recognition of market innovation as a particular category of innovation, innovation research has largely focused on technological aspects. The relationship between innovation and markets is understood as either embedding an innovation in existing market structures or creating new markets from scratch, through entrepreneurial efforts including the enrolment of supportive networks (Akrich et al. 2002a, 2002b). The innovation is typically seen as external to market processes and the problem is to adapt to or create markets to accommodate it (Johne 1999). Indeed, the market aspect of innovation has typically been reduced to a question of demand (Howells 1997; Mowery and Rosenberg 1979), and although some scholars have used the term market innovation (e.g. Johne 1999; Nyström 1990), its precise meaning is far from clear.

Still, industrial marketing research has long acknowledged the link between the two in its emphasis on co-operation and long-term exchange relationships for technological development (Håkansson 1989; Håkansson and Eriksson 1993; Lundgren 1995, see also the recent Cfp in IMM on networks and innovation). In parallel, several alternative and/or complementary conceptions of innovation have been proposed to capture non-technical features, including institutional innovation (e.g. Garud and Rappa 1994; Hargrave and Van de Ven 2006), institutional entrepreneurship (e.g. DiMaggio 1988; Fligstein 1997), cultural innovation (Holt and Cameron 2010) and the import of different evaluative principles for generating novelty (Stark 2009). These complementary theoretical streams may possibly inform research on innovation as a market process and how the inclusion of the market dimension may alter our understanding of innovation processes.

Innovations can be understood as emerging from within market processes and be associated with any of the elements that comprise the socio-technical agencement in any given market (Callon, 2007). In light of the growing attention paid to market shaping processes within marketing (Araujo et al. 2008; Jaworski et al. 2000; Rosa et al. 1999; Vargo and Lusch 2011), the issue of market innovation becomes particularly salient to address.

The market shaping literature highlights the on-going constitution of markets and underscores that there is scope for strategic action to alter markets, directing attention to new objects and means of innovation to be studied. Araujo and Spring (2006) suggest that markets should be viewed as institutional arrangements and that the location of market interfaces is neither given nor arbitrary. As suggested by Johanson and Mattsson (1985) such arrangements can be seen as the result of investments made by various market agents. Kjellberg and Helgesson (2007) provide an illustration of this in their study of the introduction of self-service in food retailing, and also highlight that market innovation may involve the active reconfiguration of market agencies. Geiger and Finch (2009) add to the discussion of agencies by directing attention to the role of salespeople in market shaping processes, suggesting that the agents involved in market aspects of innovation may differ from those involved in technical aspects. Still, the interrelation between technological and market aspects of innovation may be close, as illustrated by Harrison and Kjellberg (2010) in their study of the making of a market for affinity biosensors. Market innovations may also be closely related to the use of classification devices as illustrated by Azimont and Araujo (2007). Similarly to how Abernathy and Clark (1985) emphasized the role of incremental technical change, all these studies underscore the importance of everyday activities that maintain markets, as sources of market change. As Alderson and Cox (1948: 151) noted: “a market changes day by day through the very fact that goods are bought and sold.”

This special issue of IMM serves to highlight the importance of market innovations in general and encourages the examination of market innovation processes in particular (recognizing the potentially significant interrelation to technology). The overall purpose is to explore what innovation as a market process might entail, and to elaborate theoretically as well as empirically on the processes through which such innovations are achieved.

We welcome conceptual and empirical contributions that seek to further our understanding of market innovation processes by addressing a variety of research questions including:

• What is the scope and character of market innovation processes?
• How does the inclusion of the market dimension alter our understanding of innovation processes? How do technical, institutional and market aspects of innovation interlink?
• How can theories of technical and institutional innovation inform research on market innovations?
• What aspects of markets (e.g. reconfiguring agencies, representations, valuation practices, etc.) are subject to innovation?
• How are market innovations created and maintained? What determines success?
• Which actors engage in market innovation? What are their characteristics?
• …

Submissions of papers

Papers submitted must not have been published, accepted for publication, or presently be under consideration for publication with any other journal. Guidelines for submissions can be found in “Notes for Contributors” in recent issues of Industrial Marketing Management. Suitable articles will be subjected to a double-blind review. Hence authors should not identify themselves in the body of the paper. Papers should be submitted as single MS Word file attachment to the Special Issue editors with a copy to the IMM editor: plaplaca@journalimm.com.

Submission deadline: Dec. 15th, 2012

Special Issue Editors

Frank AZIMONT
EMLYON
azimont@em-lyon.com

Hans KJELLBERG
Stockholm School of Economics
Hans.Kjellberg@hhs.se

Emma REID
Strathclyde University
e.a.reid@strath.ac.uk

References

Abernathy, William J. and Clark, Kim B. [1985], ‘Innovation: Mapping the winds of creative destruction’, Research Policy, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 3-22.

Akrich, Madeleine, Callon, Michel, and Latour, Bruno [2002a], ‘Key to Success in Innovation Part I: The Art of Interessement.’, International Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 187-206.

— [2002b], ‘Key to Success in Innovation Part II: The Art of Choosing Good Spokespersons.’, International Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 207-25.

Alderson, Wroe and Cox, Reavis [1948], ‘Towards a Theory of Marketing’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. XIII, No. 2, pp. 137-52.

Araujo, Luis and Spring, Martin [2006], ‘Services, products, and the institutional structure of production’, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 35, pp. 797-805.

Araujo, Luis, Kjellberg, Hans, and Spencer, Robert [2008], ‘Market practices and forms: introduction to the special issue’, Marketing Theory, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 5-14.

Azimont, Frank and Araujo, Luis [2007], ‘Category reviews as market-shaping events’, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 36, No. 7, pp. 849-60.

Callon, M., Y. Millo and F. Muniesa, Eds. (2007). Market Devices. Oxford, Blackwell.

DiMaggio, Paul [1988], ‘Interest and agency in institutional theory’, in Lynne G. Zucker (ed.), Institutional Patterns and Organizations Culture and Environment (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger), 3-21

Fligstein, Neil [1997], ‘Social skill and institutional theory’, The American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 397-405.

Garud, Raghu and Rappa, Michael A.. [1994], ‘A Socio-cognitive Model of Technology Evolution: The Case of Cochlear Implants.’, Organization Science, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 344-62.

Geiger, Susi and Finch, John H. [2009], ‘Industrial sales people as market actors’, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 38, No. 6, pp. 608-17.

Hargrave, Timothy J. and Van de Ven, Andrew H. [2006], ‘A collective action model of institutional innovation’, The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 864-88.

Harrison, Debbie and Kjellberg, Hans [2010], ‘Segmenting a market in the making: Industrial market segmentation as construction’, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 39, No. 5, pp. 784-92.

Holt, Douglas B. and Cameron, Douglas [2010], Cultural Strategy: Using Innovative Ideologies to Build Breakthrough Brands (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Howells, J. [1997], ‘Rethinking the market-technology relationship for innovation’, Research Policy, Vol. 25, No. 8, pp. 1209-19.

Håkansson, Håkan and Eriksson, Ann-Kristin [1993], ‘Getting Innovations out of Buyer-Supplier Relationships’, Journal of Business to Business Marketing, Vol. 1, No. 2.

Håkansson, Håkan (ed.), [1989], Corporate Technological Behaviour, Co-operation and Networks (London: Routledge).

Jaworski, Bernard, Kohli, Ajay K, and Sahay, Arvind [2000], ‘Market-driven versus driving markets’, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 45-54.

Johanson, Jan and Mattsson, Lars-Gunnar [1985], ‘Marketing Investments and Market Investments in Industrial Networks.’, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 185-95.

Johne, A. [1999], ‘Successful market innovation’, European Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 6-11.

Kjellberg, Hans and Helgesson, Claes-Fredrik [2007], ‘The mode of exchange and shaping of markets: distributor influence on the Swedish post-war food industry’, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 36, No. 7, pp. 861-78.

Lundgren, Anders [1995], Technological innovation and network evolution (London: Routledge) 266.

Mowery, David and Rosenberg, Nathan [1979], ‘The influence of market demand upon innovation: a critical review of some recent empirical studies’, Research Policy Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 102-53.

Nyström, Harry [1990], Technological and market innovation: Strategies for product and company development (London: John Wiley & Sons).

Rosa, Jose Antonio, et al. [1999], ‘Sociocognitive dynamics in a product market’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 63, No. Special issue, pp. 64-67.

Schumpeter, Joseph A. [1934], The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest and the Business Cycle. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press).

Stark, David [2009], The Sense of Dissonance. Accounts of Worth in Economic Life. (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Vargo, Stephen L. and Lusch, Robert F. [2011], ‘It’s all B2B…and beyond: Toward a systems perspective of the market’, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 181-87.

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