Marketing—A Success Factor in Industrial Innovation

Abstract

The output of scientific and technological knowledge and invention is growing at an ever‐increasing rate, technological innovations are becoming increasingly complex and obsolescence times are shortening, all of which impose pressure on industry to step up its production of new and improved products and processes. The attitude of many would‐be innovators towards their inventions is typified by the well‐known epigram attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.” But just how appropriate is this attitude? Will it result in the successful commercialisation of new inventions (i.e. successful innovation)? Presumably not, because unless the book is published, the sermon addressed to an audience, or the mousetrap used, the world will not guess in which direction it must beat its path!