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Does market orientation impede breakthrough innovation? To date, researchers have presented opposing arguments with respect to this important issue. To address this controversy, the authors conceptualize and empirically test a model that links different types of strategic orientations and market forces, through organizational learning, to breakthrough innovations and firm performance. The results show that a market orientation facilitates innovations that use advanced technology and offer greater benefits to mainstream customers (i.e., technology-based innovations) but inhibits innovations that target emerging market segments (i.e., market-based innovations). A technology orientation is beneficial to technology-based innovations but has no impact on market-based innovations, and an entrepreneurial orientation facilitates both types of breakthroughs. Different market forces (demand uncertainty, technology turbulence, and competitive intensity) exert significant influence on technology- and market-based innovations, and these two types of innovations affect firm performance differently. The results have significant implications for firm strategies to facilitate product innovations and achieve competitive advantages.
Zhou et al. (Wed,) studied this question.