Conceptualizing innovation capabilities: A contingency perspective
Journal Title: Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation - Year 2017, Vol 13, Issue 1
Abstract
Empirical research has confirmed that a positive relationship exists between the implementation of innovation activities and the future performance of organizations. Firms utilize resources and capabilities to develop innovations in the form of new products, services or processes. Some firms prove to be better at reproducing innovation success than others, and the capacity to do so is referred to as innovation capability. However, the term innovation capability is ambiguously treated in extant literature. There are several different definitions of the concept and the distinction between innovation capabilities and other types of capabilities, such as dynamic capabilities, is neither explicitly stated, nor is the relationship between the concept and other resource- and capability-based concepts within strategy theory established. Although innovation is increasingly identified as crucial for a firm’s sustainable competitiveness in contemporary volatile and complex markets, the strategy-innovation link is underdeveloped in extant research. To overcome this challenge this paper raises the following research question: What type of innovation capabilities are required to innovate successfully? Due to the status of the extant research, we chose a conceptual research design to answer our research question and the paper contributes with a conceptual framework to discuss what innovation capabilities firms need to reproduce innovation success. Based on careful examination of current literature on innovation capability specifically, and the strategy-innovation link in general, we suggest that innovation capability must be viewed along two dimensions – innovation novelty and market characteristics. This framework enables the identification of four different contexts for innovation capabilities in a two-bytwo matrix. We discuss the types of innovation capabilities necessary within the four different contexts. This novel framework contributes to the understanding of the strategy-innovation link as well as clarifies the conceptual understanding of capabilities within the strategy literature and establishes the relationship between these structures and innovation management theory.
Authors and Affiliations
Tor Helge Aas, Karl Joachim Breunig
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP238392
- DOI 10.7341/20171311
- Views 149
- Downloads 0
Developing a Social Enterprise Performance Scale and Examining the Relationship Between Entrepreneurs’ Personality Traits and Their Perceived Enterprise Performance
On the basis of the lack of measurement tools and the research gap regarding social entrepreneurship, three studies were conducted to develop a new measure of social enterprise (SE) performance that is empirically valid...
Collaboration Patterns and Product Innovation in the Basque Country : Does a Firm's Nationality Matter?
More and more, the ability to innovate can be considered as an explanatory factor in determining the long-term potential of firms to be competitive. Therefore, it is of increasing importance to understand the critical su...
Open Service Innovation: The Case of Tourism Firms in Scandinavia
Most empirical research investigating open innovation has focused on the development of new physical products in manufacturing industries, whereas open service innovation has not been researched correspondingly. Services...
Editorial Paper. Social Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise Phenomenon: Antecedents, Processes, Impact across Cultures and Contexts
Social entrepreneurship3, as a field of research, has gained enormous interest of academics in management and entrepreneurship literature for almost 30 years now. Also, scholars in other intellectual domains like economi...
Models, Metaphors and Symbols for Information and Knowledge Systems
A literature search indicates that Data, Information and Knowledge continue to be placed into a hierarchical construct where it is considered that information is more valuable than data and that information can be proces...