Model for identifying firm’s product innovation dynamics: applied to the case of the Korean mobile phone industry

Abstract

ABSTRACT Existing studies on product innovation dynamics depend on patent analysis and only focus on the analysis of technological evolution. This study proposes a new model that can analyze complex products with many technological features and that are continuously improved. The suggested model considers the relationship between product models through a similarity measure and social network measures. An empirical analysis has been conducted on data about smartphones that had been sold in the Korean market from 2010 to 2015. The results show the inter-firm and intra-firm evolutionary patterns and identify innovation strategies (i.e. imitation or innovation) of each smartphone manufacturer. Our research contributes to existing research on product evolution by conducting analyses at product-level instead of firm-level and by considering the features of products. From a managerial perspective, our new model helps decision-makers monitoring new product developments in the industry and establishing strategies for their next product models.