Innovation Value Creation and Capture Model for Leveraging Turks and Caicos’ Emerging Food and Beverage Manufacturing Firms’ Competitiveness

Abstract

In the constantly changing modern business environment, different emerging new businesses as well as the incumbents are increasingly adopting innovation as a performance enhancement strategy. In that context, this study uses interpretivist research paradigm as integrated with exploratory research design and qualitative research method to explore and analyse questions like how, what, when and why the emerging Turks and Caicos food and beverage manufacturing ventures undertake innovations in the way they do as well as the constraints associated with such innovation behaviours and practices. Using data from twenty purposively sampled product development managers that were drawn from 20 (twenty) emerging Turks & Caicos food and beverage manufacturing ventures, thematic analysis of the interview findings indicated most of the manufacturing entities to use a four steps’ process for innovation value creation and capture that encompass market survey, product development, marketing and promotion. Even if some of the emerging new food brands were copied and pasted from the foreign based food concepts, they stated that the emerging food and beverage businesses that use the appropriate innovation value creation and capture strategies have still been able to gain the desired competitive edge. But even if this bolsters improved competitiveness and performance of most of the emerging food and beverage manufacturers, dynamics and complexities were still found to arise from inadequate financial capital, poor top management’s commitment, changing competition landscape and lack of the required talents. To therefore deal with such complexities and dynamics, it is recommended that the emerging Turks and Caicos food and beverage manufacturing firms must adopt the Four Steps’ Process for New Product Development/Innovation Value Creation and Capture Model encompassing industry and market analysis, product conceptualisation, product development, commercialization as well as periodic monitoring, evaluation and improvement.