Working Paper #2012-051
Process innovation objectives and management complementarities: patterns, drivers, co-adoption and performance effects
The excessive concentration of the innovation literature on product
development, its drivers and effects, has almost neglected an important
strategy which develops and sustains a firm's competitive advantage:
process development or innovation. This is an examination of process
innovation as more than a mere dependent variable for predicting
innovators. It provides insights into the poor attention that process
innovation variable has received as an indicator of a firm's
performance. In addition, the paper relates this process with the
management innovation phenomenon. Using 8,977 firms from Spain through
CIS data, findings suggest: (1) most process innovation performance is
explained without R&D variables; (2) process innovation process
innovation was observed to have a strong dependence on external sources
of knowledge, mainly via the acquisition of embodied knowledge; (3) an
important "implementation" effect or "learning by trying" effect is
observed in which the acquisition of embodied knowledge requires the
organization to couple the new technology with existing processes; (4)
the simultaneous co-adoption of management innovation positively
moderates and improves process performance (5) product innovation is not
related to process innovation performance. The latter result is
unrelated to consideration of co-adoption of product and process
innovation. Two-step Heckman procedures control for the selection
process. The paper presents important implications for policymakers and
scholars.
- Keywords
-
- process innovation
- process innovation performance
- management innovation
- embodied knowledge acquisition
- product innovation
- JEL codes
-
- Q31
- L25
Cite this as
APA 7th ed.Hervás Oliver, J. L., Sempere-Ripoll, F., & Boronat-Moll, C. (2012). Process innovation objectives and management complementarities: patterns, drivers, co-adoption and performance effects (UNU-MERIT Working Paper No. 2012-051). UNU-MERIT. https://unu-merit.nl/publications/working-papers/abstract/?id=4751