I recently enjoyed an article titled “Building an Innovation Base: Exploring the Role of Acquisition Behavior” by Saurabh Mishra and Rebecca J. Slotegraaf in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Sciences. The idea of the article is that acquisition can result in additional innovations, and everyone wants innovation. Innovation is “an important force through which firms can develop and sustain their competitive advantage”. This reminded me of another article I blogged about last summer: http://blog.walkerinfo.com/blog/customer-relationship-assessments/innovation-not-always-created-equal . That article provided innovation cautions, suggesting that a company should be careful when implementing too many innovations too quickly in some parts of the world.
Innovation is often evaluated via customer experience surveys. Companies are curious as to whether or not they are seen as innovative within their industry. As I blogged earlier this summer, I think it is important to delve past whether or not you are seen as innovative, but look deeper and see how that innovation is impacting your customers. In terms of acquisitions, do customers value the added benefit of innovation enough to balance the inherent associated growth pains of an acquisition?
