Commercialization of innovations: an overarching framework and research agenda

Purpose – The commercialization of innovation, which is key to entrepreneurial success, is a combination of several entrepreneurial activities. Building on research from fields of management, strategy, entrepreneurship, economics, and marketing, the paper summarized the extant literature to develop a framework of commercialization and an agenda for future research. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Extensive review of literature, which was comprised of 194 articles across 62 journals in the fields of management, strategy, entrepreneurship, economics, and marketing. Findings – The literature was categorized into six broad themes of entrepreneurial activities: sources of innovations, types of innovation, market entry (capabilities and feasibility), protection, development, and deployment. Most of the research papers that were reviewed were concentrated on single theme. Practical implications – Given the identification of six key themes of entrepreneurial activity leading to the commercialization of innovations, research questions were posed as a means to move the research forward by integrating the themes. Originality/value – This is the first paper in its kind to integrate 194 papers from 62 journals to provide a comprehensive framework of commercialization of innovations.