Building a Measurement Model for Market Visioning Competence and Its Proposed Antecedents: Organizational Encouragement of Divergent Thinking, Divergent Thinking Attitudes, and Ideational Behavior

The overall question that this research seeks to answer is the following: Are there individual and/or organizational resources related to “divergent thinking” that enhance or inhibit the firm's market visioning competence in the case of radical innovation? In order to answer this question, in this paper, the key focus is on the realm of potential divergent thinking‐related resources that the firm may possess and access to aid in the creation and development of an effective market visioning competence. In particular, individual‐level factors related to divergent thinking capabilities and, at the organizational level, encouragement of such capabilities, are investigated. Specifically, we propose that two organizational‐level factors related to organizational encouragement of divergent thinking (“encouraging ideas” and “encouraging diversity”), two individual‐level divergent thinking attitudes factors (“openness” and “ability to move from divergent thinking to convergent thinking efficiently and effectively”), one individual‐level ideational behavior factor (“ability to generate new ideas”), and a further individual cognitive factor (“need for cognition”) have direct impacts on market visioning competence. Scales are then developed and tested for measuring these potential antecedents, and they are included in a measurement model with market visioning competence to enable further research.