Does incremental and radical innovation performance depend on different types of knowledge accumulation capabilities and organizational size?

Abstract

Acknowledgement: The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Plan for R&D of Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (ref. ECO2009-12522). HIGHLIGHTSØ Incremental innovation performance is positively affected by internal knowledge creation capability and absorptive capability.Ø Absorptive capability affects radical innovation performance positively.Ø Size has a direct positive effect on incremental innovation performance.Ø Size has a direct positive effect on internal knowledge creation capability. HOW DOES ORGANIZATIONAL SIZE IMPACT ON KNOWLEDGE ACCUMULATION CAPABILITIES AND INCREMENTAL VERSUS RADICAL INNOVATION PERFORMANCE?ABSTRACT While prior studies recognise the importance of knowledge accumulation capabilities in innovation performance, current research has still failed to empirically identify its role with regard to different types of innovation performance. The objective of this paper is to address this knowledge gap and to explore the relationships between internal knowledge creation and absorptive capabilities, and radical and incremental innovation performance. The study also contributes to analyzing the complex effect that organizational size has in the whole innovation process, influencing its antecedents (internal knowledge creation capability and absorptive capability) as well as its outputs (incremental and radical innovation performance), as the literature has produced inconsistent results and the issue is subject to continuing debate. This study demonstrates that incremental innovation performance is positively affected by both knowledge accumulation capabilities and size. However, results show that only absorptive capability has a positive direct effect on radical innovation performance, whereas size has a negative non-significant effect on it. The effect of size on knowledge accumulation capabilities also turns out to be mixed. It appears to increase internal knowledge creation capability, but it does not affect the absorption of new external knowledge, and thus does not help to develop radical innovations.

Absorptive Capacity: An Analysis in the Context of Brazilian Family Firms

“…The literature points out that the size and the age of firms are internal factors that can influence the Acap. (Sørensen & Stuart, 2000;Zahra, 2005;Zahra et al, 2007;Kraiczy, Hack, & Kellermanns, 2014;Forés & Camisón, 2016). Due to the large variation in the number of employees among the firms in the sample, this variable was transformed.…”

Knowledge Management Strategies and Innovation. An application to artisanal SMEs in Morocco

“…According to Smith et al [54], firms can generate and accumulate new knowledge by following two different but complementary paths : -The first way, through a process of knowledge creation that builds on employees' internal skills and experiences [54]. Forés and Camisón [23] add that the company is capable to develop radical innovations when its knowledge is based on research and development; -The second way is to acquire new knowledge from external sources by developing their absorptive capacity [16].…”

“…To analyze the knowledge management strategy, this research focuses on two types of work, those of Hansen et al [32] on strategies for codification and personalizing knowledge, and those dealing with the impact of knowledge sources (internal or external) on innovation, namely Bierly and Chakrabarti [6], Smith et al [54], Forés and Camisón [23]. The model variables are measured using a multicriteria scale.…”

“…Codification and personalization are measured by 7 items, referring to the work of Choi and Lee [13; 14], including 4 items for personalization and 3 items for codification. The internal knowledge and external knowledge dimensions are measured by 6 items, 3 items relate to internal knowledge and 3 items to measure external knowledge, Referring to the work of Bierly and Chakrabarti [6]; Smith et al [54]; Forés and Camisón [23]. (Table 3).…”

Radical or incremental innovation adoption: do demographics and the frequency and form of innovation matter?

“…Radical innovation refers to create foremost differences in the products, processes, technologies, and organisational structure and methods of firms. On the other hand, refinement and reinforcement of current products, processes, technologies, organisational structure and methods address incremental innovation (Fores & Camison, 2016). To be able to understand why some organisations are able to generate or adopt innovation more than other organisations necessitate investigations of organisational processes that enable the generation or adoption of innovation (Germain, 1996;Tidd, 2001;Damanpour & Schneider, 2006).…”