Six Sigma: insights from organizational innovativeness and market orientation

<jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Purpose</jats:title><jats:p>Despite the implicit link of Six Sigma's focus on continuous innovation and customer satisfaction to concepts of organizational innovativeness and market orientation, there are limited theoretical analysis and conceptual development to guide and inform the theory of Six Sigma. This conceptual paper seeks to examine theoretical contributions of market orientation and organizational innovativeness to Six Sigma.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title><jats:p>This paper examines how organizational innovativeness and market orientation reinforce Six Sigma by analyzing their relevance in terms of internal consistency and theoretical predications.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Findings</jats:title><jats:p>While market orientation enhances customer focus and promotes responsiveness through continuous innovation, Six Sigma's customer orientation can lead to over‐emphasis on incremental innovation compromising capabilities for ground‐breaking innovations. Six Sigma can redress this imbalance by integrating long‐term goals and resource capability development.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Originality/value</jats:title><jats:p>This paper advances seven theoretical propositions highlighting key concepts of organizational innovativeness and market orientation as contributions to Six Sigma and avenues for further research.</jats:p></jats:sec>