Intellectual capital and innovationa comparison between high technology and low technology firms

Resumen

The turbulent and challenging environment in which companies operate has contributed to the increasing interest of researchers to find new ways of innovating. Innovation essentially involves utilising knowledge resources for the creation of new knowledge assets (Nonaka & Takeuchi 1995; Tidd & Bessant 2009). Intellectual capital (IC) and innovation are intrinsically related because IC brings together all the knowledge-related resources that a company owns or manages for achieving sustainable competitive advantages (Youndt et al. 2004). Indeed, there is widespread support for IC as a relevant antecedent of innovation (Subramaniam & Youndt 2005; Wu et al. 2007; Hsu & Fang 2009; Martin-de-Castro et al. 2013a). The studies listed above that focused on the relationship between IC and innovation have expanded the literature in the field by offering empirical evidence for a connection between IC and innovation, and by testing different linkages between both concepts. However, relevant research gaps remain. Since the seminal article by Subramaniam and Youndt (2005) on the IC antecedents of innovation was published over a decade ago, many other research papers have contributed to the field. A thorough literature review that analyses the past, current and potential future research paths of the IC–innovation literature was therefore needed. This comprehensive review revealed that the traditional IC framework composed of human, structural and relational capital (Sveiby 1997; Bontis 1998) is still widely applied in research works. However, as the environment and inner workings of companies might have changed in the last 20 years, there is likely a need to revise and update the knowledge resources currently operating in companies. In addition, researchers maintain that companies with different levels of technological sophistication manage knowledge of differing characteristics (Nelson & Wright 1992; Schilling 2010; De Carolis 2014; Rosenbloom 2014); nevertheless, the literature review herein discovered that studies about the IC–innovation relationship have not considered the technology level of the companies. Another research gap refers to the fact that various types of innovation may require different combinations of IC components (Damanpour & Aravind 2006; Damanpour & Aravind 2012). However, literature on the IC-innovation relationship has not taken the type of innovation into consideration. Consequently, this thesis analyses the influence of both traditional and new IC components on different types of innovation performance, distinguishing between high and medium-high technology companies and low and medium-low technology firms. Four publications have attempted to contribute to this aim. The first is a structured literature review (SLR) about the literature dealing with the IC–innovation relationship. This publication revealed certain research gaps, two of which (related to the IC components considered and to the technology levels of the companies) are also addressed in this thesis. Publications 2, 3 and 4 are empirical research papers that test various models linking traditional and new IC components with various types of innovation performance in high technology (high-tech) and low technology (low-tech) companies. These empirical publications offer relevant contributions to the IC literature and practical guidelines for business managers. Keywords: Intellectual capital, traditional and new components, innovation, technology level