Salespeople's Contribution to Innovation in the Firm: Can Generativity Be a Driving Force?

摘要

The role of salespeople in spurring and facilitating innovation appears intuitive: Salespeople should play a key role in innovation and new product development (NPD) since they are probably the ones who best understand consumer needs and wants. Yet most salespeople do not take part in NPD efforts (Gordon et al. 1997), and those who do, do get involved because they have incentives to. Yet some seem to get involved simply because they want to, despite the absence of any other reason (McDougal and Smith 1999). This paper explores the role of salespeople's concern for the well-being of future generations—a phenomenon known as generativity—in driving salespeople to take part in their employer's innovation process through idea generation, promotion, and realization (that is, their innovative performance). In addition, it explores whether said innovative performance translates into increased sales performance. Six hypotheses are derived from the extent literature: The higher the level of generativity in a salesperson, the higher his/her performance in generating (H1), promoting (H2) and realizing (H3) ideas within his/her organization. The higher a salesperson's professional innovative performance with regards to (H4) Idea Generation, (H5) Idea Promotion, and (H6) Idea Realization, the higher his/her sales performance.