Short communication: To speed or not to speed? The impact of market type and the COVID pandemic

Abstract

Rapidly developing and bring an innovation to market (innovation speed) should have positive effects on performance. Yet innovation and technology management literature also suggests that faster innovation speed may lead to higher innovation failures in some scenarios. We investigate the value of innovation speed in four market scenarios: established markets before and during the COVID pandemic and emergent markets before and during the COVID pandemic. The study findings indicate that the pandemic has major implications for the value of innovation speed. In established markets where customer needs are well defined, rapid innovation increases performance before the pandemic; yet fast innovation speed leads to worst performance during the pandemic. In emergent markets where customer needs are still being formed, before the pandemic, the effect of innovation speed on performance is U-shaped (that is, slow or rapid innovation speed is better than moderate innovation speeds). In contrast, increasing innovation speed always leads to higher performance during the pandemic and innovation is most successful at very fast innovation speed. We present top ten success factors for managing innovation speed before and during the pandemic. The research findings are applicable for the post-pandemic new normal. The study also advances the engineering and technology management literature.