A cross-national study of success factors in innovation project: China and western developed countries

This paper discussed an empirical research on success factors in innovation projects and analyzed the effect of environmental idiosyncrasies on their relative importance. Based on a cross-national survey, the study extracted five common success factors in China and Western developed countries. They are, namely, marketing skills, project strategy and process, management methodology and organization, project idea and creative team. It was found that firms in China put more emphasis on marketing skills and put less emphasis on other factors, in comparison with those in western developed countries. Meanwhile, it is revealed that firms in manufacturing sectors pay less attention to project idea and more attention to management methodology and organization. Finally, it is found smaller firms’ competitive advantage relies more on marketing skills.