When is a new thing a good thing? Technological change, product form design, and perceptions of value for product innovations

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Rindova, Violina P.; Petkova, Antoaneta P.
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; California State University System; San Francisco State University
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.1060.0233
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 217-232
• 关键词: innovation; product design; VALUE CREATION

摘要

Innovation researchers recognize that the uncertainty with regard to the value-creating potential of product innovations increases with their technological novelty, and have argued that the usefulness and value of novel products are socially constructed. Despite this recognition, researchers have not explored how the outer form in which a technological innovation is embodied influences the processes through which the innovation's value is constructed and perceived. In this paper we argue that by embodying novel technologies in objects with specific functional, symbolic, and aesthetic properties, innovating firms also endow their products with cues that trigger a variety of cognitive and emotional responses. Drawing on psychological research we articulate how such cognitive and emotional responses underlie initial perceptions of value and theorize how innovating firms can influence them through product form design. Our framework explains how product form contributes to perceptions of value by modulating the actual technological novelty of a product innovation and facilitating how customers cope with it. Our theoretical framework makes an important contribution to innovation research and practice because it articulates how product form can be used strategically to achieve specific cognitive and emotional effects and enhance the initial customer perceptions of the value of an innovation.