Comparative Analysis of Idea Generating Processes in Emerging and Developed Countries; Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan

In recent years, researchers have focused on innovations launched from emerging countries. Although several cases of innovative products developed in emerging countries have been reported, there are few studies investigating differences in the idea generating process in emerging and developed countries. The main purpose of this study is to investigate those differences by adopting an exploratory approach pursued through a series of idea generation experiments. The experiments were conducted using as subjects graduate school students in two emerging countries, Indonesia and Malaysia, and one developed county, Japan. To simulate a realistic new product development process, the experiment consisted of three parts: the participants developing ideas, experts evaluating the ideas, and then participants analyzing the process over several group discussions so that the points may be discerned in the development process where there are differences between emerging countries and developed countries. Differences on both idea characteristics and selection criteria were found. First, the Indonesian and Malaysian participants proposed feasible ideas having lower investment risk than did Japanese participants. Second, the participants from the two emerging countries selected ideas with greater confidence than did the Japanese participants. Third, the former groups made decisions on their ideas without referring to experts' evaluations in contrast to the latter group.