When Tradition Turns Into Innovation How Firms Can Create and Appropriate Value Through Tradition

Summary: Starting from the increasing difficulties firms face to create new value for customers and achieve competitive advantage, this book proposes an innovative strategy to sustain innovation at the product level, based on the notion of tradition. Specifically, the authors argue that firms may successfully innovate, exploiting the whole set of competencies, knowledge, values and culture that characterize a specific firm, territory, and/or age. Analyzing several international case studies, this book clearly shows how tradition may be effectively used, allowing companies to create successful new products and how to profit from them. The book tackles the main issues and problems of a tradition-based innovation approach, tracing the patterns of how old and new knowledge can be combined. About the authors: Dr. Antonio Messeni Petruzzelli is research fellow at the Politecnico di Bari (Italy), where he teaches Technology Strategy. A PhD. in Innovation Management and visiting scholar at the IESE Business School (Barcelona, Spain), his research interests mainly concern the area of innovation management, including themes such as value creation and appropriation, knowledge creation and transfer, and inter-organizational relationships. In these topics he has published several articles with international journals and presented papers at conferences around the world. Professor Vito Albino is full Professor of Innovation and Project Management at the Politecnico di Bari (Italy), where he has been Chair of the Department of Business and Industrial Engineering. Visiting scholar (1986) at the University of Cincinnati (USA) and visiting professor (1994) at the University of South Florida (Tampa, USA); Albino has also been President of the Italian Association of Business Engineering. Member of several national and international associations, he is author of more than 70 papers published in national and international journals and conference proceedings in the fields of project management, operations management, and firm clusters. Contents: Re-thinking the innovation approach; The meaning of tradition; A tradition-based innovation strategy; Case studies; Toward a new perspective of innovation.