Entrepreneurial orientation and innovation performance: insights from Korean ventures

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the curvilinear relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and innovation performance in ventures of Korea, where this topic has been unexplored. Design/methodology/approach - This study used 1,837 ventures’ responses in a panel data of the 2015 Korea’s Venture Business Investigation Survey. The measurements of EO based on the Miller/Covin and Slevin scale were used from the survey. The author adopted and independently measured three different indicators of innovation performance: technology innovation, product innovation and sales growth. Findings - The results of the regression analysis show the significant curvilinear relationships of EO with technology innovation and product innovation, while the relationship between EO and sales growth remains linear. The author also found that multiplicative EO construct explains the changes inR2better than the summative EO construct for the improvement of innovations in technology and product. Originality/value - This paper provides empirical evidence on the EO–innovation performance relationships from Korean ventures – an underexplored area of research. It also takes into account the curvilinear relationships of summative and multiplicative EO constructs with different performance indicators. Future research can benefit from the use of the multiplicative EO estimation and multiple performance indicators to capture a clearer picture of the causal relationships.