IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ecinnt/v25y2016i8p747-768.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is newest always best? Firm-level evidence to challenge a focus on high-capability technological (product or process) innovation

Author

Listed:
  • Kieran O'Brien

Abstract

This paper sets out to address a gap in the empirical literature on the importance of ‘low-capability’ innovation for firms. The study is framed around discussion of the conceptual bias that remains in policy and academic literature towards a narrow subset of technological (product or process) innovation labelled ‘high-capability’ innovation in this paper. The paper argues that this bias influences the public and business community's understanding of the term ‘innovation’ and has implications for innovation measurement, research, policy and strategy. The study uses data from an economy-wide, regional innovation survey based on the Oslo manual, and includes 648 innovative firms covering all industry sectors. The paper combines elements of both subject and object approaches to innovation measurement, using data from an open-ended survey question to explore the alignment between what firms report as their ‘most important innovation’ (MII) and firm capabilities for introducing ‘high-capability’ technological innovation. Results show that a substantial share of firms report an MII that is a ‘low-capability’ innovation, including those firms with high R&D intensity, those with novel technological innovation, and firms in more innovative sectors of manufacturing and knowledge intensive business services. The paper discusses the implications of this result for future innovation measurement and research.

Suggested Citation

  • Kieran O'Brien, 2016. "Is newest always best? Firm-level evidence to challenge a focus on high-capability technological (product or process) innovation," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(8), pages 747-768, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:ecinnt:v:25:y:2016:i:8:p:747-768
    DOI: 10.1080/10438599.2016.1147194
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10438599.2016.1147194
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10438599.2016.1147194?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. O'Brien, Kieran, 2020. "Innovation types and the search for new ideas at the fuzzy front end: Where to look and how often?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 13-24.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ecinnt:v:25:y:2016:i:8:p:747-768. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GEIN20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.