Abstract
The task of each firm’s strategic management is to identify those sustainable sources of competitive advantage that represent a way to achieve business goals and competitive advantage. Business management should be able to define determinants that fundamentally influence the innovation activity of business. Innovation leaders are influenced by the same set of determinants that allow them to maintain their position in the market. Identifying these determinants is a key source of knowledge for defining or adjusting corporate strategies, enabling sustainable benefits and for efficient building and functioning of countries’ innovation ecosystems based on cross-agents’ interactions leading to sustainable development. The goal of this paper is to identify the combination of innovation determinants in Dynamic Innovation Strategic Model (DISM) driving creation and sustaining innovation leaders’ competitive advantage in selected European countries belonging to the group of moderate innovators. Likewise, authors define a unique set or combinations of factors that will (fundamentally embedded in a company strategy) have a significant impact on the innovative production of the business, which are one of the key elements of innovative ecosystems. With the use of CIS data (from Eurostat) on the innovators and followers of nine EU countries and own regression models, the key determinants of the success of the innovation leaders and followers were found. These determinants are (also in appropriate combination) mainly: in-house R&D activities, co-operation with various partners, and marketing and design. The results clearly show that for innovative leaders, key determinants have a positive impact on produced innovations; for the followers, the same group has a negative influence.
Highlights
Nowadays, companies are increasingly being pushed to contribute to building national innovative ecosystems to promote socio-environmental sustainability and development [1] and to flexibly react to their competitors
We primarily focus on Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries and, we take into account a new perspective on the role of firms in terms of their innovation performance as key actors within national innovation ecosystems where cross-agent networks arise and allow the emergence of co-creating and co-evolving of new innovations [16]
While there are significant differences in innovation activities within the EU, we extent the current state of knowledge and provide, on a theoretical basis, a Dynamic Innovation Strategy Model and interesting way of analysis, which takes into account the new perspective on the role of firms in terms of their innovation performance within select European countries
Summary
Companies are increasingly being pushed to contribute to building national innovative ecosystems to promote socio-environmental sustainability and development [1] and to flexibly react to their competitors. There is a certain departure from fundamental theories, which only see resources as a competitive advantage. The reason for this is the low or no dynamics of these resources [2]. In response to these conclusions, there are several models that change the resource-based approaches by complementing other dynamic elements. These are, for example according to Li & Liu [3]: “absorptive capacity, integrative capacity, construct capacity, higher order capacity and so on to explore and explain the ways to success”. Rauter et al [5] showed a relation between sustainable and economic innovations that could lead separately or together to defined goals, by using similar innovation strategies and practices
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