Crafting Firm Competencies to Improve Innovative Performance
Boris Lokshin, Anita van Gils & Eva Bauer
#2008-009
Recent interdisciplinary research suggests that customer and
technological competencies have a direct, unconditional effect on firms'
innovative performance. This study extends this stream of literature by
considering the effect of organizational competencies. Results from a
survey-research executed in the fast moving consumer goods industry
suggest that firms that craft organizational competencies - such as
improving team cohesiveness and providing slack time to foster
creativity - do not directly improve their innovative performance.
However, those firms that successfully combine customer, technological
and organizational competencies will create more innovations that are
new to the market.
Keywords: Firm competencies; radical and incremental product innovation,
team cohesiveness
UNU-MERIT Working Papers
ISSN 1871-9872