Imovator’s Dilemma: How to Decide When to be Offensive and When to be Defensive?

Although being an innovator has some merits, being an imitator has its own merits as well. Staying competitive therefore requires consideration of imovation—both innovation and imitation simultaneously. An imovator should play role of offensive imovator (near to being pure innovator) when innovation is worthwhile. In case of otherwise, being a defensive imovator (near to being early imitator) can be compatible strategy. How to decide and when to be offensive/defensive greatly depends on innovation potentials of industries assessed by consideration of both their technological and market conditions. This chapter introduces a unique framework called as quick innovation intelligence process for assessment of innovation potential. It makes use of databases of patent and publication and some marketing indicators/determinants in order to take technological and market conditions into account. The framework uses interval type-2 fuzzy sets and systems (IT2FSSs) and a data-fusion methodology to combine above-mentioned databases in order to infer about innovation potential. An imovator can be aware of which strategy is well suited and can go through calculations about when innovation is worthwhile by taking likelihood of being imitated into account as well through the presented assessment process. For that reason, the process presented in this chapter can contribute to solution of the imovator’s dilemma.