Corporate Reputation and the Commercialization of Innovation: Does Reputation Match Reality, and Does Innovation Matter?

We seek to understand which firms excel at innovation and commercialization. In doing so, we first ranked companies that performed well on four measures: spending on R&D Spending (2006), Patenting (cumulative 2006 and 2007) and Commercialization of Innovations (Cumulative for 2007 and 2008). We then compared our rankings with that of Business Week/Boston Consulting Group’s annual ranking of the most innovative companies, which primarily is based on reputation measured as perceptions among sitting CEO’s. Somewhat surprisingly, there is not complete overlap between our more quantitative ranking and the one done by Business Week/BCG, and we highlight the reasons why. Second, we tested the relationship among R&D, patents, and product releases and the role they play in driving revenue. We found that although innovation and commercialization are different, they need to be considered together, that perceptions and reality in this realm often do not match, and that joint innovation and commercialization activities can influence the bottom line.