MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Balancing Valued Tradition With Innovation

Sooner or later, most successful companies face the challenge of updating a cherished old product. Make no changes, and you risk becoming irrelevant to new customers. Change too much, and you may alienate your most loyal customers.

So how do you leverage a historically strong brand with sensitivity to heterogeneous customer preferences? To explore this question, we studied Italian opera companies, which face this dilemma every season. Many of the best-loved operas in the repertoire are more than 150 years old, and the most devoted operagoers have fairly traditional tastes. However, if opera companies hew to their preferences, they may limit their cultural relevance and fail to develop new audiences.

About the Author

Giulia Cancellieri is an assistant professor in the Department of Management at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Simone Ferriani is a professor in the Department of Management at the University of Bologna and a professor of entrepreneurship at City, University of London. Gino Cattani is a professor of management and organizations at the Stern School of Business at New York University.

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