Influence of top management team vision and work team characteristics on innovation

Purpose - This work has three main objectives – to analyse whether the strategic vision of the top management team (TMT) directly affects firms' innovation performance; to shed some light on which of the intrinsic characteristics of work teams proposed in the literature influence innovation; and to analyse the joint effect that the TMT's vision and the work team's characteristics may exert on innovation performance. Design/methodology/approach - The sample for this study was chosen from the Dun & Bradstreet database. The population consists of firms with more than 50 employees belonging to the three sectors of the Spanish economy with the largest number of registered patents according to statistics from the Spanish Office of Patents and Brands (960 firms). Findings - The results indicate that the TMT's strategic vision alone does not explain companies' innovation performance. Innovation also requires the existence of diverse, cohesive, and autonomous work teams whose members engage in fluent informal communication. Research limitations/implications - The empirical evidence demonstrates the complexity of the innovation performance that has to be encouraged by the TMT, but also supported by the existence of teams with specific characteristics. Practical implications - These results offer relevant implications for R&D managers about the way teams should be formed to increase innovation. The paper derives some conclusions about the key characteristics of work teams that, in combination with the view of the TMT, can affect innovation in firms. Originality/value - The majority of earlier studies have analysed theoretically the effect of both variables – the strategic vision of the TMT and the intrinsic characteristics of teams – on innovation, but separately. This paper analyses the joint effects that the intrinsic characteristics of work teams have on innovation, which resolve some contradictions regarding the way some variables affect innovation of the firm. Finally the results offer empirical evidence on how Spanish firms obtain innovation performances.