From Technological Inventions to New Products: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda of the Main Enabling Factors

Firms' ability to steady exploit their proprietary inventions via new products is an important driver to innovate, and then to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. However, the current state of the art on the main determinants affecting technology-based products' commercialization is characterized by the lack of an integrative framework, and fails to analyze these factors across different levels of analysis. Thereby, the present paper aims at providing such an integrative and multilevel framework, bringing together findings on the various determinants enabling the introduction of new products based on firms' own technological inventions through a systematic review of more than 100 articles published in leading international journals. More specifically, we integrate and discuss the literature findings by distinguishing related factors across the individual, firm, network, and industry level of analysis. In addition, a summary of the main gaps and future research directions are presented, in the attempt to further stimulate the academic debate on the topic.