This title provides a thorugh overview of the issues high-tech marketers must address, and provides a balance between conceptual discussions and examples; small and big business; products and services; and consumer and business-to-business marketing contexts.

In order for High Technology (HT) companies to tackle contemporary demanding market challenges, they frequently deploy time-reduction strategies with respect to product launch. Marketing of technology related products – and especially cutting edge ones – involves a complex and multidimensional bundle of specific and unique characteristics, such as the complexity of products, the intensity of the competition, confusion and/ or fear of adoption among consumers, fast pacing changes in the external environment. The very nature of the interrelations that evolve as part of the dynamic process of strategy formulation contributes further to the formulation of a very challenging environment which is described as tumultuous, volatile and turbulent. These specific features, qualities and characteristics constitute the core of the innate need for an integrated approach that requires and depends on the cooperation and coordination of specific functional competencies. This book employs a systemic approach that accommodates the integration of specialized departmental capabilities as a fundamental prerequisite and a cornerstone for the successful navigation of high-tech organizations in their extremely competitive environments. It provides a solid and extant context of compact and consistent cognitive background that is specific to the HT strategic marketing field, and a strategic tool that utilizes, relies and is built on the turbulent environment of HT rather than just overlooking, avoiding or ignoring it, and that assumes a proactive point of view, capitalizing on characteristics specific to this field, through the provision of a strategic managerial and marketing model that is overlaid onto a reliably assessed foundation of dynamic qualities, with a long-term orientation and scope, albeit one that would be easy to apply and which will generate immediate results.

Market and Technical Knowledge Integration in R&D-Intensive Companies explores the integration of market and technical knowledge within R&D-intensive companies. The crux of the book’s theoretical premise is the importance of integrating market and technical knowledge within organisations. Drawing from the resource-based view (RBV) and the knowledge-based view (KBV) of organisations, this premise stresses the need for knowledge integration. After an analysis of the literature on R&D, the book presents qualitative evidence from interviews of R&D professionals who elucidate knowledge integration methods. The book provides theoretical as well as practical insight on market and technical knowledge integration. Presenting a new approach to understanding how R&D intensive companies operate, the book gives researchers and practitioners practical advice on improving market and technical knowledge integration. It explains the critical role of efficient market and technical knowledge integration in innovation. It also examines how knowledge management contributes to superior business performance of R&D intensive companies.

The contributors to this book explore the role and importance of qualitative, interpretist research in the dynamic field of enterprise. They establish the link between the innovative nature of small enterprise and the need to utilise research methodologies, which are themselves innovative. The book highlights the fact that enterprise research has the advantage of sufficient youth as a research discipline to permit a wide scope for new and innovative research studies. Probing this unexplored terrain therefore requires exploratory research methods supported by inductive research techniques. These methods and techniques are examined in detail: topics covered are diverse, ranging from a review of quantitative research methodologies and the integration of methodological philosophies and approaches; to the application of two novel analytical techniques. Convergent interviewing, action research, case research and marketing research for isolated SMEs are all also explored in depth. This book will provide academics, researchers and students with a cohesive body of material on the use of interpretist research techniques in all areas of enterprise research.

Markus Sattler reviews the predictors of successful innovation management on firm level with a meta-analytic approach. His findings suggest in that the role of knowledge management and an environment of learning are important success factors on which managers can have a substantial effect.

The authors analyze and discuss the field of communication from a multidimensional point of view. Divided into three parts, the first traces its history from scientific, humanistic, and technological roots. The second explores communication theory in the areas of interpersonal, organizational, mass media, intercultural, telecommunication, nonverbal, and with reference to issues of gender as the authors summarize the most significant theories, research, and practices in each area. A discussion of the future direction of communication research is provided in the final section.