City Research Online

Abstract

How do managers time the launch of new technologies? Without actionable frameworks to ensure consumers and other stakeholders are ready, innovation releases remain a risky endeavor. Previous work on legitimacy has focused on stages following a product launch. However, launch timing concerns shared expectations of when actions should occur prior to launch. This conceptual article evaluates the alignment between firm and stakeholder expectations regarding launch timing. It proposes that the market timing of new technology launches is structured by two dimensions: firm-led coordination and stakeholders’ willingness to change. Combining these dimensions, the authors map four types of market timing situations managers can encounter: antagonistic, synergistic, flexible, and inflexible timing. Temporal legitimacy is achieved when a firm and its key stakeholders share timing norms about the ideal moments when activities should occur in a market process. The authors conceptualize proto-markets as prefacing the well-known market legitimacy stages. This article concludes with a detailed managerial decision tree on how to create the optimal technology product launch moment and avenues of future research on market timing beyond technology launches.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Copyright © 2024, the author. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Request permissions for this article.
Publisher Keywords:	market timing, proto-markets, legitimacy, legitimation, technology product launch, market creation, innovations
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management T Technology > T Technology (General)
Departments:	Bayes Business School Bayes Business School > Management
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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