Innovation in Marketing by Theodore Levitt 1962 First Printing

1962. soft. Very Good. Innovation in Marketing by Theodore Levitt 1962 First Printing 5.5 X 8 Tall, 253 pages Published by McGraw-Hill Condition: Very Good with jacket showing some rubbing, black and grey hardback fine text block tight Levitt received the Academy of Management Award for the outstanding business book of 1962 for Innovation in Marketing . From Levitt........... We live in a business world that increasingly worships the great tribal god innovation, lyrically hailing it not just as a desired, but as a necessary, condition of a company s survival and growth. This highly agitated confidence in the liberating efficacy of innovation has in some places become an article of faith almost as strong as the Natchez Indian s consuming faith in the deity of the sun. Man creates gods according to his needs. Significantly, the businessman s new demigod and the Natchez s more venerable and historic god make identical promises. They both promise renewal and life. Yet before all our R D energies and imaginations are too one-sidedly directed at the creation of innovations, it is useful to look at the facts of commercial life. Is innovation all that promising? Is it all that profoundly liberating? More important, how does a policy of innovation compare in promise to more modest aspirations? In spite of the extraordinary outpouring of totally and partially new products and new ways of doing things that we are witnessing today, by far the greatest flow of newness is not innovation at all. Rather, it is imitation. A simple look around us will, I think, quickly show that imitation is not only more abundant than innovation, but actually a much more prevalent road to business growth and profits. IBM got into computers as an imitator; Texas Instruments, into transistors as an imitator; Holiday Inns, into motels as an imitator; RCA, into television as an imitator; Lytton, into savings and loans as an imitator; and Playboy, into both its major fields (publishing and entertainment) as an imitator. In addition, though on a lesser scale, we see every day that private brands are strictly imitative, as are most toys and new brands of packaged foods. In fact, imitation is endemic. Innovation is scarce. This greater abundance of imitation is perfectly understandable. Each solitary innovator sparks a wave of eager imitators. By the time a so-called "new product reaches widespread visibility, it has usually been on the market for some time. Its visibility is less a consequence of its actual or temporal newness than it is of the number of its strident imitators. The newness of which consumers become aware is generally imitative and tardy newness, not innovative and timely newness. Significant Distinctions Generally speaking, innovation may be viewed from at least two vantage points: (1) newness in the sense that something has never been done before, and (2) newness in that it has not been done before by the industry or by the company now doing it. Strictly defined, innovation occurs only when something is entirely new, having never been done before. A modest relaxation of this definition may be allowed by suggesting that innovation also exists when something which may have been done elsewhere is for the first time done in a given industry. On the other hand, when other competitors in the same industry subsequently copy the innovator, even though it is something new for them, then it is not innovation; it is imitation. Thus: Bubble-or skin-packaging of small fixtures may be "new for the hardware industry but may have been around several years in other applications (innovation). Or it may also be new for a given company in the hardware industry but may have been around among competitors for some time (imitation).