Stakeholders in Commercialization and Creating Market for Innovation

Even though successful commercialization is of great importance to innovative firms, we do not yet know how diverse stakeholders can contribute to commercialization of a radical innovation that require particular market creation support. We will analyze an extreme case, a functional food i.e. a novel product category between food and medicine at global market settings. The case relies on qualitative interviews with regulatory bodies, doctors, opinion leaders, licensing partners, scientists and marketing managers and extensive secondary data. Results uncover the contributions by diverse stakeholders to commercialization and market creation. Stakeholders perform activities such as drafting new legislation and food labelling for health claims, conducting safety assessments, product development, finding out consumers’ preferences, communicating benefits of the product to several actors for adoption, and gaining the trust of healthcare professionals and patients. This study contributes to marketing and innovation management literature and generates practical advice for managers who commercialize (radical) innovations.