The Role of Employee Creativity and Attention-To-Detail in Product Innovation

Product innovation has been identified as the key to firms’ marketplace success. Yet, the failure rate for new product is high. Because of the high costs associated with new product development, there is considerable theoretical and managerial interest in how to minimize the high failure rates of new products and what separates new product winners from losers. This study focuses on employee capacity to engage in creativity and attention-to-detail simultaneously, skills/tasks that are seen as involving different centers of attention, and rely on somewhat incompatible behaviors and processes. The results show that employees need to engage at high levels creativity and attention-to-detail in their pursuit to enhancing product innovation to achieve superior financial performance.