What is it about?
Relatively little attention has been paid to the understanding of process innovation, compared to the well-researched product innovation. This paper contributes to improve our understanding of process innovation and its specific process capabilities and performance by exploring, across many industries, 4,608 process-oriented innovators. Process innovation is defined as adoption of technologically new or significantly improved production methods, including changes in equipment, organisation or methods of product delivery. Process-oriented innovators or process seekers are those firms which usually only introduce process innovation, and no product innovation. These have received less attention by scholars. Results show that process innovation without also organisational innovation complements constrains innovative performance. Complex process-based innovation complementarities result from the simultaneous development and integration of new machinery and organisational innovations.
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Why is it important?
This work was supported by Spanish Ministry of Economics [grant number ECO2015-63645-R].
Perspectives
for future studies, we need to assess not only the process effects but the financial effects or other general measures to assess firms’ financial returns as a more accurate measure of competitiveness, such as ROE, ROA or growth. It would also be interesting to test whether those firms undertaking process and product simultaneously produce higher or lower
SOFIA ESTELLES-MIGUEL
Universitat Politecnica de Valencia
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This page is a summary of: Beyond product innovation: deciphering process-oriented innovators, complementarities and performance effects, Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, July 2017, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/09537325.2017.1347623.
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