Sustainable and Traditional Product Innovation without Scale and Experience, but Only for KIBS!

Esteban Lafuente,Juan Leiva,Yancy Vaillant

doi:10.3390/su10041169

Abstract

This study analyzes the ideal strategic trajectory for sustainable and traditional product innovation. Using a sample of 74 Costa Rican high-performance businesses for 2016, we employ fuzzy set analysis (qualitative comparative analysis) to evaluate how the development of sustainable and traditional product innovation strategies is conditioned by the business’ learning capabilities and entrepreneurial orientation in knowledge-intensive (KIBS) and non-knowledge-intensive businesses. The results indicate two ideal strategic configurations of product innovation. The first strategic configuration to reach maximum product innovation requires the presence of KIBS firms that have both an entrepreneurial and learning orientation, while the second configuration is specific to non-KIBS firms with greater firm size and age along with entrepreneurial and learning orientation. KIBS firms are found to leverage the knowledge-based and customer orientations that characterize their business model in order to compensate for the shortage of important organizational characteristics—which we link to liabilities or smallness and newness—required to achieve optimal sustainable and traditional product innovation.

Highlights

Product innovation has increasingly been recognized as a primary means for organizational renewal via the exploitation and exploration of different resources and capabilities [1,2]
What is the contribution of this study relative to the results found in prior work on product innovation? Differently from previous research efforts [4,21,22], in this study, we analyzed the strategic configurations that shape sustainable and traditional product innovation in a developing economy, as well as in different organizational contexts, namely knowledge-intensive and non-knowledge-intensive firms
We argue that relevant organizational elements—i.e., organizational learning capabilities and entrepreneurial orientation—along with differences in business size and market experience, have implications for the sustainable and traditional product innovation plans of high-performance organizations

Summary

Introduction

Product innovation has increasingly been recognized as a primary means for organizational renewal via the exploitation and exploration of different resources and capabilities [1,2]. Pressures from different stakeholders have increasingly swayed organizations spanning from manufacturing to knowledge-intensive industries to engage in sustainable and traditional product innovation processes [3,4]. Successful product innovation—understood as a process that comprises the technical design, R&D, manufacturing, management, and commercial activities involved in the marketing of a new (or improved) product—is highly dependent on critical organizational elements. In line with these arguments, this section presents an overview of research dealing with organizational learning capabilities, entrepreneurial orientation, and product innovation in knowledgeintensive business contexts. The creation or development of OLC leads to promote knowledge exploitation processes that potentially constitute a source of competitive advantage which, in turn, may yield to superior performance and better organizational strategy making [3,30,32]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion