Impact of Social Capital on Radical Innovation Efforts of the Organizations: A Case in the Aviation Industry

Social capital stems from the social relationships and yields highly critical benefits such as creativity, innovation and team productivity. However, the context and the structure of the social ties can potentially change the outcomes of social capital. This study aims to reveal the extent and the characteristics of social capital used in the radical innovation efforts. The strength of ties, type of trust and type of knowledge utilized in a selected radical innovation project were analyzed in this research. As an exploratory and descriptive study, case study method was adopted to investigate social capital as a relatively unexplored phenomenon, and to reflect the experiences of re-levant individuals in regards to the social relationships embedded in the innovation efforts. The findings indicate that the organization has benefited from the existence and effective use of internal social capital, strong ties were developed and used among the members of the same department, strength of the ties got weaker as the team members, job descriptions and responsibilities started to vary and, finally, the case revealed that competence-based trust and tacit knowledge were found to be the essential parts of creative and innovative thinking.