New Product Creativity: Multi-Level Meta-Analytic Insights and Empirical Generalizations

The extant new product creativity (NPC) literature reveals the empirical equivocality with regards to antecedent explanada of NPC as well as the consequential effects of NPC on performance outcomes. This study proposes a multilevel conceptual model to investigate the interactive nature of the relationships between NPC, its antecedents, and consequences. By meta-analysing effect sizes obtained from 58 studies on NPC, the results indicate the overall positive relationship between team, organizational, and market characteristics and NPC, and identify a series of ‘dominant' predictors. Furthermore, our meta-analytic findings indicate that NPC significantly improves new product and firm performance. Finally, the results of a moderator analysis reveal a number of contextual and measurement factors that influence the strength of the NPC - performance relationship.