Please comment on this taxonomy. Do you agree with their classification? Why or Why not? Please explain.
In the traditional approach, we usually classify a new product on a single dimension, from incremental innovation (minor changes such as adding new flavor to your existing yogurt line), to radical innovation (completely new product such as the first microwave in the world). However, such simple classification seems insufficient to capture all the differences.
Chandy and Tellis (1998) review the literature on radical innovation and note that two common dimensions underlie most definitions of the construct—that is, (1) the extent to which the product incorporates a new technology and (2) the extent to which it fulfills key customer needs better than existing products do. They propose a taxonomy that differentiates innovations along these two dimensions (the above table).
According to this taxonomy, a radical innovation is a product that is high on both the technology and the market dimension; it involves a substantially different technology while offering a substantial increase in customer benefits.
A market breakthrough provides substantially greater benefits than existing products, but its core technology is not significantly new.
A technological breakthrough uses a substantially different technology than existing products without considerably increasing the benefits to consumers.
Please answer the following two questions.
- Please give a real world example for each category (i.e. one example for radical innovation, one for incremental innovation, one for market breakthrough, and one for technology breakthrough).
- Please comment on this taxonomy. Do you agree with their classification? Why or Why not? Please explain.
- Use Business Week source (http://www.businessweek.com/), find a business week article discussing a firm’s Marketing strategies to launch a new product (it could be a radical innovation, or an incremental innovation, or a market breakthrough, or a technology breakthrough etc). Please copy and paste the web link, and use your own words to summarize the article findings.