In steering towards the future, innovation managers are commonly advised to dismiss the old and make way for the new. However, such "recency bias" may significantly limit a firm's innovation potential and prevent it from realizing the benefits of past knowledge. We argue that the temporal dimension of innovation deserves more research attention. Combining prior research on innovation, dynamic capabilities and family business, we conceptualize a new product innovation strategy called innovation through tradition (ITT) and identify its underlying capabilities of interiorizing and reinterpreting past knowledge. The illustrative cases of six long-lasting family businesses (Aboca, Apreamare, Beretta, Lavazza, Sangalli and Vibram) are analyzed and discussed, hence exemplifying how firms that build long-lasting and intimate links with their traditions can be extremely innovative while remaining firmly anchored to the past. These examples help visualize theoretical concepts and recognize the potential advantages of past knowledge in terms of value creation and capture. We develop an agenda for future research aimed at improving our understanding of the temporal search processes involved in the ITT strategy, within and outside the family business field, and thus contribute to innovation and organizational learning studies. Managers of non-family firms can learn from the family businesses that successfully use ITT to create and nurture a competitive advantage and emulate them by leveraging rather than discarding tradition.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive picture of the innovative efforts undertaken over time to develop the digital technologies for managing the interface between supply chain management and marketing processes and the role they play in sustaining supply chain management-marketing (SCM-M) integration from an information processing point of view.Design/methodology/approach: Patent analysis and actual examples are used to carry out this study. In detail, first, the authors identify the subset of enabling technologies pertaining to the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) that can be considered the most relevant for effective SCM-M integration (i.e. Industrial Internet of Things, Cloud computing, Big Data analytics and customer profiling, Cyber security). Second, the authors carry out a patent analysis aimed at providing a comprehensive overview of the patenting activity trends characterizing the set of digital technologies under investigation, hence highlighting their innovation dynamics and applications.Findings: This research provides insightful information about which digital technologies may enable the SCM-M integration. Specifically, the authors highlight the role those solutions play in terms of information acquisition, storage and elaboration for SCM-M integration by relying on illustrative actual examples. Moreover, the authors present the organisations more involved in the development of digital technologies for SCM-M integration over time and offer an examination of their technological impact in terms of influence on subsequent technological developments.Originality/value: So far, much has been said about why marketing and supply chain management functions should be integrated. However, a clear picture of the digital technologies that might be adopted to achieve this objective has yet to be revealed. Thus, the paper contributes to the literature on SCM-M integration and Industry 4.0 by highlighting the enabling technologies for the Industry 4.0 that may particularly serve for managing the SCM-M interface from an information processing perspective.