Fostering Market Knowledge Use in Innovation. The Role of Internal Brokers

Is market knowledge useful in generating innovation and why are some companies able to use market knowledge to generate innovation more than others? This article presents in-depth data on four companies facing the challenge of continuous innovation in different industrial settings and shows how companies rely on the use of internal knowledge brokers to: (a) absorb market knowledge; (b) drive knowledge sharing, and (c) favor the process of innovation. The empirical analysis allows us to make a detailed taxonomy of brokers that might achieve different objectives for firms bent on innovation.