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Marketing’s roles in innovation in business-to-business firms: Status, issues, and research agenda

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Abstract

A project funded by the Institute for the Study of Business Markets to develop an understanding of the current state of business-to-business marketing and a research agenda for the field identified a lack of understanding of how the marketing function can or should best contribute to firms’ innovation efforts as the top priority. A workshop of senior academics and research-oriented practitioners explored this topic further, identifying four specific themes: (1) improving customer needs understanding and customer involvement in developing new products, (2) innovating beyond the lab, (3) disseminating and implementing research findings in firms, and (4) marketing’s overall role in innovation. This article defines these themes, sketches the current status of knowledge about each theme, frames practitioners’ issues with them, and proposes research agendas for each theme to move the field forward. The goal is to encourage rigorously executed academic research that can also help firms innovate more successfully.

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Notes

  1. Googling “Voice of the Customer” on April 20, 2013 returned over 800,000 hits.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the Institute for the Study of Business Markets for its support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA

    Abbie Griffin

  2. Washington State University, Pullman, USA

    Brett W. Josephson

  3. Pennsylvania State University, 468 Business Building, Penn State, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Gary Lilien

  4. B2B Leadership Board, ISBM, University Park, USA

    Fred Wiersema

  5. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA

    Barry Bayus

  6. London Business School, London, UK

    Rajesh Chandy

  7. UCLA, Los Angeles, USA

    Ely Dahan

  8. Applied Marketing Science, Waltham, USA

    Steve Gaskin

  9. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA

    Ajay Kohli

  10. Innovation Focus, Lancaster, USA

    Christopher Miller

  11. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA

    Ralph Oliva

  12. University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, USA

    Jelena Spanjol

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  1. Abbie Griffin
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Correspondence to Gary Lilien.

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Griffin, A., Josephson, B.W., Lilien, G. et al. Marketing’s roles in innovation in business-to-business firms: Status, issues, and research agenda. Mark Lett 24, 323–337 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-013-9240-7

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