Marketing and persistent innovation success

Despite their critical roles in innovation success, marketing activities are overlooked when the sources of innovation persistence are considered. Using three waves of the French Community innovation survey covering the period 2002-2008, this paper investigates the influence of marketing activities on innovation success and in particular on persistent innovation success in high-tech industries. Our results confirm that innovation success depends on past innovation success. Innovation marketing does not positively influence persistent innovation success in low-tech industries. The dynamic of innovation marketing is found to be more complex in high-tech industries: innovation marketing positively influences persistent innovation success for incremental innovation but negatively influences it for radical innovation. We therefore provide support to the existing literature on ambidextrous organizations which, for the most part, associate incremental innovation success with marketing and radical innovation success with R&D resources. Innovation marketing also impacts innovation success over the short term. However, there is no evidence of a positive carry-over effect from innovation marketing activities over time (short or long term). The results regarding the short-term effects of innovation marketing activities mainly hold for low-tech industries.