Exploring innovation success recipes in low-technology firms using fuzzy-set QCA

R&D investment and the arrangement of innovation capabilities in Brazilian manufacturing firms

“…Somehow, it is as if the business driver capabilities end up compensating the little elaborated development capability, which is a consequence of the low levels of revenue invested in R&D. This corroborates to the thesis of organizational innovation importance for firms that do not invest, or invest low values in R&D (Christensen, 1994, Kirner et al, 2009, Hirsch-Kreinsen, 2015, Reichert et al, 2016.…”

“…Traditionally, innovation studies at the firm level follow two perspectives: innovation as the result of R&D investments and as the consequence of different innovation capabilities. However, although there is important research in each of these perspectives, studies that explicitly link them are scarce (see for example, Reichert et al, 2016;Rasiah et al, 2016;Chamsuk et al, 2017). The present paper goes exactly in the direction of better understanding the relation between R&D investment and innovation capabilities.…”

“…The OECD's (2003) classification was used to identify innovation capabilities arrangements in firms of low technology industries by Reichert et al (2016), and to analyze the innovation behavior of high technology and medium high technology industries by Villamizar et al, (2017). On the other hand, Legler and Frietsch's (2007) classification, for example, was applied by Kirner et al (2009) to interpret the innovation behavior of firms that invest little in R&D.…”

“…This approach does not perceive, due to the model's limitation, that innovation is more than traditional technology development in products and processes. Innovation also happens in organizational and marketing domains (Hirsch-Kreinsen, 2015, Reichert et al, 2016. The innovation capabilities approach, in turn, has a broader scope, analyzing the innovation phenomenon from a more complete perspective.…”

“…Thus, the innovation strategy of low R&D firms must be focused, firstly, on the cost reduction of managerial and transactional process. On a secondary level, these firms must establish routines and skills for improve products quality (Reichert et al, 2016). Equation 2 illustrates the capabilities arrangement that brings innovation for this group of firms (considering only the significant capabilities).…”