Organizational innovation capabilities. Empirical evidence from B2B contexts/Capacidades de innovaci - Vol. 37 Núm. 161, Octubre 2021 - Estudios Gerenciales - Libros y Revistas - VLEX 877971505

Organizational innovation capabilities. Empirical evidence from B2B contexts/Capacidades de innovaci

AutorValenzuela-Fernández, Leslier
CargoResearch article
  1. Introduction

    Organizational Innovation Capabilities in Business to Business (B2B) contexts focuses on developing strong innovation strategies as well as creating sustainable competitive advantages (Schmidt, Sarangee, & Montoya, 2009). Even so, to profit from innovation, business pioneers need to understand business design options as well as customer needs and technological trajectories.

    Without a well-developed business model, innovators fail to capture value from their innovations, and studies claim that planning and controlling business models will be determined by the capabilities of the company (Teece, 2010). In this context, the B2B sector in Chile has not exploited innovation to its full. Although Chile remains the most innovative economy in Latin America (LATAM) according to Global Innovation Index (GII) it went from being 44th globally in 2016, to 46th in 2017. The positions of Latin American countries do not vary over time, versus other areas where there is greater dynamism. In fact, the Global Innovation Index (2019) again declared Chile as the most innovative country in Latin America, despite having fallen 4 positions from 47th in 2018 to 51st in 2019. This time, our country stood out as a regional leader, followed by Costa Rica (56), Mexico (57), Uruguay (62), Brazil (66), Colombia (67), Peru (69) and Argentina (73).

    Consequently, the purpose of this research is firstly, to explore the variables of organizational innovation capabilities associated with better performance. Secondly, to analyze the impact of these variables on organizational innovation. Thirdly, to validate if there is any significant relationship between the variables and the outcomes of innovation processes and performance through empirical evidence from the B2B contexts in Chile.

    The main contributions are: 1) To propose a conceptual model that includes three main constructs related with organizational innovation capabilities (valid and reliable variables) and 2) provide empirical evidence regarding the B2B sector in Chile. Thus, this work will provide a diagnosis about organizational innovation capabilities in order to guide future research and organizational developments in marketing innovation processes for different industrial sectors.

    Therefore, the research is as follows: The first section illustrates a theoretical framework through systematic content analysis, as proposed by Becheikh, Landry, and Amara (2006), and present the literature review about the relevant variable of proposal model and hypothesis. The second section describes the methodology used in the study. The third section shows the principal results. Finally, in the last section, the most relevant conclusions and future research are presented.

  2. Theoretical framework

    The main role of innovation is to contribute to business survival, stimulate the growth of new job opportunities, improve business competitiveness, and contribute to the growth and productivity of the company (Pino, Felzensztein, Zwerg-Villegas, & Arias-Bolzmann, 2016). In fact, the design and development of successful business models come from diverse and powerful capabilities, and innovation is one of these core dynamic organizational capabilities (Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997; Sanchez, 2004).

    For Wang and Cheng (2013), organizational innovation capabilities are described as the capabilities to generate changes to reinforce existing services or products to innovate changes that could significantly transform the organization. Therefore, "soft innovation" is seen as an increasingly significant element in the service sector in modern economies. Currently, its contribution is recognized in organizational and marketing innovation and in different industries (Nicolas, Rojas-Mora, & Valenzuela-Fernández, 2020).

    According to Tuominen and Hyvönen (2004), organizational innovation capability is composed of managerial innovation and technological innovation. Managerial innovation involves the development of new strategies and business forms, while technological innovation pertains to the development of products, services and processes interrelated with these business activities (Damanpour, 1991; Tuominen & Hyvönen, 2004). Both capacities have been shown to have different impacts on organizational performance and competitive superiority (Sanchez, 1995). Thus, technological capabilities are essential to add value for the client and management capabilities for the value appropriation process (value for the organization itself) (Mizik & Jacobson, 2003; Tuominen & Hyvönen, 2004).

    Then a firm with strong organizational innovation capacity means it will have superior ability (compared to competitors) to combine, increase, and transform internal competencies to achieve changes in its business environment, creating and capturing value for the company and its clients (Teece, 2007).

    In this way, a superior capacity for organizational innovation implies the existence of skills that should improve the performance of an innovation project (Srivastava, Fahey, & Christensen et al., 2001; Tuominen & Hyvönen, 2004; Zhao, Jiang, Peng, & Hong, 2021). In fact, the degree of a firm's capacity to innovate is measured by the performance of its innovation projects: development superior skills, successful financial performance and value adding performance (Srivastava et al., 2001; Tuominen & Hyvönen, 2004; Ernst, Kahle, Dubiel, Prabhu, & Subramaniam, 2014). In highly dynamic markets, the integration of these capabilities optimizes the production and efficiency of the company and allows it to achieve higher performance of innovation due to the synergy between them (Salim, Ab Rahman, & Wahab, 2019).

    Thus, to benefit from innovation in management and marketing, business pioneers must develop their organizational innovation capabilities to generate business models according to the client's needs and reality of the firm (Teece, 2010; Tuominen & Hyvönen, 2004), clearly define what they are main constructs related with these capabilities. These constructs should be multi-areas and will be a key factor in the creation and improvement of sustainable strategies, development of competitive advantages and the success of the organization (Teece, 2007; Teece, 2017).

    On the one hand, literature shows that the innovation process requires the business model to create a system where innovation goes hand in hand with correct use and exploitation of knowhow and different (tangible as well as intangible) assets (Teece, 2017; Mousavi, Bossink, & Vliet, 2018). Besides, the new paradigm in business models follows the creation and capture of value for the firm and the customer (market orientation) and raises the need for structural reconfiguration of companies (Spieth, Schneckenberg, & Ricart, 2014). Such reconfiguration requires companies to develop the capacity for innovation through a collaborative process, to work and compete with government agencies and other companies (Brenes, Camacho, Ciravegna, & Pichardo, 2016).

    In this scenario, this study postulates that innovation performance is related to the organizational innovation capability, which is a result of the decisions and objectives in relation to innovation strategy & management projects, collaborative networks, and market orientation. Other research highlights that these three factors are somewhat complementary and that by working together, the company could promote sustainability in its business models and its innovation projects (Bocken & Geradts, 2020).

    2.1 Innovation strategy & management projects

    The main objective of company operation is to achieve its objectives by using its own resources and capabilities to overcome challenges and difficulties, as well as, take advantage of opportunities that arise along the way. This way, the firm will try to ensure that its actions and decisions are carried out in the most adequate way to create value and profit (Amat, 1996; Djumanazarovna, 2020) through a defined appropriate strategy.

    Strategic Project Management allows the organization to make decisions about designating resources for the central actions to evolve, where the efficiency of the operation will be influenced by those decisions and by the goals set. The strategy could be described as a logical combination of multiple elements, actors, components, and actions built as the optimal combination of factors, to work with a specific goal in a situation (Borges-Andrade, Escobar, Palomino, Saldaña, & Souza-Silva, 1995).

    Hence, managing an innovation project in marketing today means much more than planning a sequential and interrelated set of activities. To implement such projects requires actions even before the formal phase of project development, linked to creating a favorable environment (Koen et al., 2001). Then, we can define strategic project management as a set of steps organized and adjusted to the requirements of the markets that allow orienting business action plans, and try to anticipate foreseeable events that could affect or impact the organization (Muralidharan, 2020; Hernández, Cardona, & Del Rio, 2017; Reid & Brentani, 2004).

    For innovation to be successful, accurate diagnosis of the company's current situation is required to establish a realistic contribution that innovation can make in the organization (Hernández et al., 2017). With this objective, the capacity of management and strategic project development in companies play a fundamental role as this allows innovation to be managed through market surveillance, competitive and prospective intelligence, transforming the information obtained into useful input for decision-making (Aguirre, 2015; Hnatenko, Orlova-Kurilova, Shtuler, Serzhanov, & Rubezhanska, 2020).

    Holtzman (2014) highlights the importance of promoting continuous innovation in the organization to create value by developing a portfolio of innovation capabilities. If a company aims to achieve a sustainable advantage through innovation, it is necessary...

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