The development of innovative capacity as a strategic resource in technology-based incubation activities.

AutorWelter, Clarice Vepo do Nascimento
  1. Introduction

    Although the importance of innovation has a consensus in the scientific community, it took years to stand out in the studies of economic growth of countries. It was only with Schumpeter (1934) that the theme was considered as a driving factor for the economy, having a determining influence on theories of innovation. For the author, economic development was determined by innovation, which is a dynamic process in which new technologies replaced the previous ones, in a process of creative destruction.

    The first studies on dynamic capacity (DC) were introduced by Winter (1964), and since then multiple efforts have been made to develop this concept (Teece, 2009; Wang & Ahmed, 2007; Zollo & Winter, 2002). However, this theme became more prominent from the 1990s onwards, with the studies of Teece and Pisano (1994); Teece, Pisano and Shuen (1997) and later Eisenhardt and Martin (2000).

    The concept of DC represents an evolution of the resource-based view-RBV (Barney, 1991), answering the gaps left by it, such as the fact that this strategy is not sufficient to guarantee a sustainable competitive advantage (Teece & Pisano, 1994), and not enough to explain how some companies respond quickly to changes in the external environment.

    Wang and Ahmed (2007) proclaim that DC is the behavior oriented towards integrating, reconfiguring, renewing and recreating resources and capabilities and, most importantly, upgrading and rebuilding key capabilities in response to changing environments, to achieve and sustain competitive advantage. The authors identified in their studies that DC are composed of three elements: adaptive capacity, absorptive capacity and innovative capacity. This study focuses only on innovative capacity (IC), that consists of the company's ability to develop new products and markets by guiding the strategic alignment towards innovation behaviors and processes.

    Given that the economic success of organizations is largely due to their ability to innovate (Tidd, Bessant, & Pavitt, 2008), this study aimed to identify the organizational tools and mechanisms that provide the development of innovative capacities of companies that have been technology-based incubators, linked to community universities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

    The study adheres to the international research agenda, referring to nascent innovations in organizations located in dynamic environments, where the IEBTs are inserted, and within a context of large institutional voids. Brazil is characterized by a dynamic and complex context with institutional gaps. These occur when institutional arrangements do not allow the full functioning of the market leading to innumerable social inequalities, either due to the absence, weakness or non-fulfillment of the role expected of the institutions that constitute the social fabric (Agostini, 2017).

    Disarticulation between innovation systems combined with resource constraints eventually impel companies to seek local cost reduction solutions enhanced by responsive learning with the native market. These situations stem from several institutional shortcomings, including a lack of adequate public policies and political and economic contexts. These voids can be filled by different factors: companies; NGOs; community and technology-based businesses, among others (Agostini, 2017).

    The accomplishment of our study is justified by the scarcity of studies related to the component elements of the DC (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000; Meirelles & Camargo, 2014), constituting a theoretical gap regarding the innovative capacity. The work also seeks to contribute to the discussion of how IC is developed in organizations. By identifying which instruments and mechanisms are conducive to the development of IC, the research contributes to the understanding of how the innovation process occurs in companies, since the development of innovation may assist companies in the elaboration or review of their strategies and innovation management policies.

  2. Theoretical framework

    2.1 Dynamic capabilities

    DC theory is a relatively recent topic in academia, and it is a theme of great interest to researchers in the area of Administration in various fields of knowledge, such as strategic management, entrepreneurship, marketing, among others (Meirelles & Camargo, 2014). The original proposal was the one by Winter (1964). Since then, several authors have been trying to develop the concept of DC (Teece, 2009; Wang & Ahmed, 2007; Zollo & Winter, 2002). Teece, Pisano and Shuen (1990) began this attempt by noting that within a company it is not just a set of resources that matters, as the RBV (Barney, 1991) had predicted, but also the mechanisms by which companies learn to accumulate new skills and capabilities.

    Subsequently Teece and Pisano (1994) continued the above mentioned study and stated that DCs were sufficient to explain why some successful companies were able to present possibility of reaction at the right time by innovating products faster and more flexibly using their managerial capabilities to coordinate and redistribute internal and external competencies.

    Moving forward in trying to develop a concept Teece, Pisano and Shuen (1997, p. 516) defined DCs as "the firm's ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external resources/competences to address and shape rapidly changing business environments".

    Refining the aforementioned studies, Eisenhardt and Martin (2000, p. 1107) conceptualized DC as resource-using business processes, defined as "the organizational and strategic routines by which firms achieve new resources configurations as market emerge, collide, split, evolve and die".

    There are several DC definitions made by the researchers and although there is a link between them, each author highlights some particular aspect. Thus, it is possible to identify two lines of approach: (1) set of organizational skills, behaviors and capabilities (Andreeva & Chaika, 2006; Collis, 1994; Helfat et al,2007, Mckelvie & Davidson, 2009-1689); Wang and Ahmed, 2007, and (2) set of routines and processes (Dosi, Faillo, & Marengo, 2008, Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000; Teece, 2009; Winter, 2003; Zollo & Winter, 2002).

    Wang and Ahmed (2007) were the authors who developed a DC research model, considering the integration of three capacities: absorptive capacity, as the company's ability to acquire external knowledge, assimilate it with internal knowledge, creating mechanisms to explore this new knowledge; adaptive capacity, which involves a company's ability to identify and capitalize on emerging market opportunities and adapt in time to changing environment. Finally, the ability to innovate, which reflects the company's ability to develop new products and markets by guiding strategic alignment to innovation behaviors and processes.

    In this study, the option was to focus on innovative capacity, among dynamic capabilities, as a strategic resource in technology-based incubator organizations, which will be explored in the subsequent section.

    2.2 Innovative capacity

    The ability to innovate is the ability to transform knowledge and ideas into new products, processes and systems to benefit both the company and its stakeholders (Lawson & Samson, 2001). Innovative capacity is considered a key element that drives companies to success (Hult, Hurley, & Knight, 2004), so as much as company growth and profitability, innovative capacity is a key element in determining the performance of a company (Mitrega, Forkmann, Zaefarian, & Henneberg, 2017; Zaefarian, Forkmann, Mitrega, & Henneberg, 2017). It can be inferred that the ability to innovate implies that, on the one hand, efforts to innovate are internal to the company and, on the other, they require information from external sources.

    The study by Mitrega, Forkmann, Zaefarian and Henneberg (2017), whose purpose was to analyze how companies use Networking Capability (NC) to manage relationships in order to improve performance in product innovation, indicates that only companies with certain internal capabilities can achieve superior performance. From this perspective, the authors recognize the ability to innovate as one of the most important internal resources, without which the acquisition of knowledge through collaborative innovation networks would be of little value, as the company would be unable to use this resource efficiently.

    Under the same theoretical lens, but seeking to understand the effect of the ability to end collaborative relationships on innovation capacity as well as on company performance, the results presented by Zaefarian, Forkmann, Mitrgga and Henneberg (2017) point to the potential impact of relational capacity on product innovation.

    Cassol, Zapalai and Cintra (2017) show that it is possible to observe a trend of global competition, in which companies seeking to innovate tend to achieve better results. It is believed that the contribution of these studies is based, firstly, on analyzing the antecedents of IC, respectively, network capacity for relationship management and ability to terminate collaborative relationships, as well as suggesting that resources need to be managed effectively to achieve its value creation potential.

    In the present study, innovative capacity will be based on the theoretical model of Wang and Ahmed (2004) that considers five dimensions: product innovation, process innovation, market innovation, behavioral innovation and strategic innovation.

    Table 1 presents the definition of these typologies.

    2.3 Development of innovative capacity mechanisms and instruments For Meirelles and Camargo (2014), DC are developed through three elements: behaviors and skills for change and innovation; routines and processes of search and innovation; and learning mechanisms and knowledge governance. As this study will deal only with innovative capabilities (Wang & Ahmed, 2007), these mechanisms will be considered to identify how innovation capacity is developed in...

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