[01PH]

Not really sure in how far this is a new insight. Based on Drucker's old mantra Business has only two basic functions - marketing and innovation it is pretty obvious that in production based industries manufacturing and innovation are stronger related.

But it is great to see that influential business academics like him increasingly promote the fact that business success is not (only) about juggling numbers. Or to quote from my favorite paper by Christensen:

And all data are subjective. Each form of data is a higher-level abstraction from a much more complex reality

(2004 Carlile & Christensen - The Cycles of Theory Building in Management Research)