The Importance of the Raw Idea in Innovation: Testing the Sow's Ear Hypothesis

Vol. LI (February 2014), 14–26 *Laura J. Kornish is Associate Professor of Marketing, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado (e-mail: [email protected]). Karl T. Ulrich is CIBC Professor of Entrepreneurship and e-Commerce, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (e-mail: ulrich@wharton. upenn.edu). The Mack Center for Technological Innovation at Wharton and the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at Leeds provided financial support for this research. Thomas Åstebro kindly shared data from his related work. The authors are grateful for helpful comments on this work from Eric Bradlow, Cheryl Druehl, John Lynch, Page Moreau, Kamalini Ramdas, David Robertson, and participants at the Ninth Annual Product and Service Innovation Conference and the 2012 Yale Center for Consumer Insights Conference. The authors thank Abigail Schneider for research assistance. Joel Huber served as guest editor and Donald Lehmann served as associate editor for this article. LAURA J. KORNISH and KARL T. ULRICH*