A comparison of new product success factors across advanced countries: A multi-level approach

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the influence of factors on the firm, industry, and country levels on the new product development performance (NPD) of manufacturing firms in advanced economies. The resource-based view, industrial organization theory and institutional theory have established that firm-, industry- and country-level factors are all relevant for the NPD of firms. However, little is known about the relative importance of factors at the three different levels across countries, as prior studies on firms’ NPD have focused on specific countries and levels of analysis. Our analysis of survey data from 1,437 manufacturing firms in nine advanced OECD countries shows that while firm-level factors are generally better predictors of firms’ innovativeness than either industry- or country-level factors, the results strongly differ across countries, indicating that the relative importance of antecedents of innovativeness is country-specific rather than universal.