Imitation or innovation? New ventures’ NPD strategies in emerging markets

New product development (NPD) plays a pivotal role in the survival, growth, and performance of new ventures; existing studies, however, have paid scant attention to new ventures' trade-offs between imitative and innovative NPD strategies, particularly in emerging markets. This study explores the relative impact of innovative and imitative NPD on new venture performance and their contingency across different entrepreneurial motivations and institutional environments in China. The findings based on a multilevel dataset from China indicate that innovative NPD has a stronger positive effect on new venture performance than imitative NPD. In addition, opportunity-motivated entrepreneurship and privatisation enhance the effect of innovative NPD whereas attenuate the efficacy of imitative NPD.