Rethinking the Market-Technology Relationship for Innovation

This paper revisits the quot;what causes innovation - market pull or technology push?quot; debate to argue that the conceptualisation is flawed and that the firm is the only quot;agentquot; capable of innovative action. The paper differentiates between quot;usequot;, quot;needquot; and quot;intended usequot; to obtain greater precision with respect to the technology-market matching process that is fundamental to innovation. The validity of the approach is demonstrated through empirical examples. These examples also show the value of distinguishing between two types of market concept used by the innovating firm. These are the quot;reference marketquot; which is a traded product that is a principal source of quot;usequot; ideas for the mental construction of the quot;innovation marketquot; concept. It is the latter that can be thought to guide the construction of innovative production technology