Innovation is typically considered as one of the main sources of a company’s competitive advantage. However, within symbolic industries, innovative behavior also represents a threat to a specific company identity, which is one of its core assets in order to gain domain consensus. Innovation menaces existent identity and fashion companies need to avoid diluting their identity while innovating. Fashion companies are strongly facing a trade-off between “disrupting” and maintaining a consistent fit with the needs and expectations of consumers, or “keep” their own identity and avoid brand dilution. From this viewpoint, the presence of a strong stylistic identity might act both as an advantage and a constraint that affects the evolution of business. In this paper, we aim at clarifying if and when companies are more reluctant to change in order to preserve their own identity. The common assumption is that the older an organization, the greater is its reputation, the lower its orientation to pursue radical innovation in order to preserve its own identity. In this paper we test this hypothesis and prove that older and better established companies might actually have huger incentives to innovate compared to younger and smaller organizations, which still struggle to affirm their own identity. Older and better established companies are more positively oriented towards continuous change, not only because they have more means to finance it, but also because need to pursue innovation in order to enhance market opportunities and create new needs in their targeted segments of customers.
Innovation in Symbolic Industries. The Influence of Critical Audience's Evaluations on Fashion Companies' Behavior
CILLO, PAOLA;PRANDELLI, EMANUELA
2012
Abstract
Innovation is typically considered as one of the main sources of a company’s competitive advantage. However, within symbolic industries, innovative behavior also represents a threat to a specific company identity, which is one of its core assets in order to gain domain consensus. Innovation menaces existent identity and fashion companies need to avoid diluting their identity while innovating. Fashion companies are strongly facing a trade-off between “disrupting” and maintaining a consistent fit with the needs and expectations of consumers, or “keep” their own identity and avoid brand dilution. From this viewpoint, the presence of a strong stylistic identity might act both as an advantage and a constraint that affects the evolution of business. In this paper, we aim at clarifying if and when companies are more reluctant to change in order to preserve their own identity. The common assumption is that the older an organization, the greater is its reputation, the lower its orientation to pursue radical innovation in order to preserve its own identity. In this paper we test this hypothesis and prove that older and better established companies might actually have huger incentives to innovate compared to younger and smaller organizations, which still struggle to affirm their own identity. Older and better established companies are more positively oriented towards continuous change, not only because they have more means to finance it, but also because need to pursue innovation in order to enhance market opportunities and create new needs in their targeted segments of customers.
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