The Mediating Role of Intellectual Capital in Open Innovation in the Service Industries

Abstract

The paper intends to examine the mediating role of intellectual capital in the relation between the openness of service companies’ search strategies and thr innovation performance. It models the relationship between external search strategies of open innovation and proposes how intellectual capital matters for openness strategies in the service industries. Moreover, the paper intends to expand the field of open innovation through exploring the mediating effect of intellectual capital. This paper fulfills an identified need to study how intellectual capital can be enabled in the open innovation of the service industries. Both Hierarchical Multiple Regression and the Structural Equation Model were employed to test the innovation model by the panel data of the second Taiwan Innovation Survey including 948 service firms. Empirical insights enable us to have a better understanding in terms of how service companies learn from external knowledge sources. This paper suggests that the impact of openness strategies on innovation performance becomes indirect through the partial mediator of intellectual capital so that innovation performance in service industry benefits from simultaneously incorporating intellectual capital with the efficient openness strategies. Finally, the paper includes implications for more insights into how service companies improve their innovative activities with external searching strategies and practices in terms of intellectual capital.

Intellectual Capital Change Management in the Construction Industry—The Case of an Inter-Organisational Collaboration

“…Companies are increasingly seeking out opportunities to create value through inter-organisational relationships [8]. In fact, according to the new paradigm of Open Innovation, organisations should seek to collaborate with or rely on partner organisations with the specific purpose of exchanging knowledge [33]. Therefore, organisations are increasingly becoming dependent on external collaborations to secure competitive advantages and improve their innovative capabilities [33,34].…”

“…Chesbrough [7], who can be considered as the "father" of this paradigm, considered it as a method which allows organisations to develop new products or services by collaborating with external innovation sources. According to this paradigm, there is a shift from developing innovations internally to accessing and integrating external knowledge [33]. Therefore, when referring to strategic partnerships, the organisation can use their partners' resources (such as knowledge) to foster OI processes [43].…”

“…This is especially important in the case of SMEs, which typically lack crucial resources such as marketing capabilities [12]. Furthermore, the innovation process can be different according to the industry to which the organisation pertains [33]. For example, service organisations "are more concerned with marketing opportunities which are also identified as an innovation of using services to sell more products" [33] (p. 2).…”

“…Furthermore, the innovation process can be different according to the industry to which the organisation pertains [33]. For example, service organisations "are more concerned with marketing opportunities which are also identified as an innovation of using services to sell more products" [33] (p. 2). OI can bring benefits when there is a need for organisations to spend significant costs in accessing new ideas such as market know-how [33].…”

Reporting of Intellectual Capital Management Using a Scoring Model

“…According to the view of these authors and others [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34], intellectual capital is a composite or multicomponent variable, with four components: human capital, structural capital, processes capital, and relational capital (clients capital). Those components are not necessarily independent: between them may exist dependencies, interactions, or causality relations.…”