Fostering Innovation in Cultural Contexts: Market Orientation, Service Orientation, and Innovations in Museums

Many museums are committed to market orientation as the underlying philosophy for their strategies. This orientation has to be coordinated with a service orientation focused on quality and custody in order to fulfill the museum’s mission. In the current work, the authors analyze the different impact of market orientation and service orientation on organizational and technological innovations implemented by museums. The hypotheses posited are examined for a sample of 491 British, French, Italian, and Spanish museums. Findings suggest that visitor and donor orientation are two key market orientation dimensions for technological and organizational innovation in museums, whereas interfunctional coordination and collaboration with competitors do not act directly, although they do boost the effect of visitor orientation. Further, quality orientation is also central to innovation. The present work thus concludes the existence of two interrelated routes that lead to technological and organizational innovation in museums, a business approach based on market orientation and a cultural approach based on service orientation.