Abstract

Purpose – Th e present paper adds to the most recent current of literature that highlights the importance of innovation in services, analyzing a setting – Portugal – which is relatively backward in terms of innovation performance. Design/methodology/approach – Based on a sample of 4128 companies (including 1489 service companies) that answered the Community Innovation Survey 2008, we assessed, by resorting to logistic regressions, the determinants of innovation performance in Portuguese companies. Findings – 1) Workers who have the 1st cycle of higher education have a positive and signifi cant impact on the innovation of service companies whereas PhDs are detrimental to companies’ innovative performance; 2) Companies in the service sector in general, and in KIBS in particular, that eff ectively invest in external and (continuous) internal RD 3) External scientifi c sources of information for innovation are crucial (and much more than in manufacturing) to the innovation performance of service companies, especially of KIBS; 4) Similarly to manufacturing, participation in innovation activities in cooperation with foreign partners appears as a key factor in the innovative performance of service companies. Originality/value – The study demonstrates the influence of companies’ openness and the relative importance attributed to diff erent sources of information for innovation on innovation outcomes of service companies (and KIBS) compared to manufacturing industries.

Highlights

  • Services and innovation have characterized the recent growth of world economies (Aboal, Bravo-Ortega, & Cresp, 2015; Battisti, Gallego, Rubalcaba, & Windrum, 2015)

  • The scope of this article was to analyze the determinants of innovation in Portugal for the service and Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) companies as compared to manufacturing companies

  • Human capital appears as positively associated with innovation in service and KIBS companies, but only up to the 1st cycle level

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Summary

Introduction

Services and innovation have characterized the recent growth of world economies (Aboal, Bravo-Ortega, & Cresp, 2015; Battisti, Gallego, Rubalcaba, & Windrum, 2015). Some determinants of the innovative performance of service companies, as compared to manufacturing companies or the Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) sub-set, demand further exploration (Djellal et al, 2013), in what concerns the relation between companies’ absorptive capacity, openness with scientific, market, and other partners, and innovation performance (see Lazzarotti et al, 2016). In this context, the present paper contributes to empirical literature on the innovative performance of service companies, at three main levels. The Conclusion discusses the results obtained in light of existing literature and summarizes the main conclusions and contributions of this study, indicating directions for future research on the topic under analysis

The services regime as relevant analysis framework
Main hypotheses to be tested
Openness
Control variables
Methodological considerations
Empirical results
Findings
Discussion and conclusions

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