| Abstract: | This article attempts to understand the idea fruition process, or the fuzzy front-end set of activities that an organization
may informally engage in before it adopts a formal process for developing a new product. The authors propose that the idea
fruition process consists of three sub-processes: idea creation, idea concretization, and idea commitment. They also propose
and test the individual and organizational factors that influence the idea’s degrees of creativity, concretization, and commitment
to further the understanding of the phenomenon and, thus, boost the creation and harnessing of worthwhile ideas in organizations.
Astra Zeneca
Janice Griffiths-Hemans (jaiuce.griffith-hermans@astrazeneca.com) holds a Ph.D. in business administration (marketing strategy and new product development)
and a master’s in market research from the University of Georgia, an MBA in marketing from the University of Miami, and a
bachelor of science degree in pure and applied chemistry from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. Janice is currently
a Senior Manager of Consumer Insights with Astra Zeneca, Wilmington, Delaware.
Rajiv Grover (rgrover@terry.uga.edu) is the head of the department and holder of the Terry Chair of Marketing at the Terry College of
Business, the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. He has received several honors for his research and teaching efforts—the
O’Dell award for the Best Paper in theJournal of Marketing Research and the Hugh O. Nourse Outstanding MBA Teacher Award. He has authored the bookTheory and Simulation of Market-Focused Management, published by Dry den Press. He is currently editingThe Handbook of Marketing Research: Do’s and Don’ts, which will be published by Sage Publications. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1983. |
