Abstract
Purpose:
The 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 significant 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 effectively invest in external and (continuous) internal R&D activities are more innovative; 3) External scientific 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 different sources of information for innovation on innovation outcomes of service companies (and KIBS) compared to manufacturing industries.
Keywords:
Innovation performance; Services; KIBS; Manufacturing; Portugal
Resumo
Objetivo:
O presente trabalho tem por objetivo contribuir para a mais recente corrente de literatura que destaca a importância da inovação nos serviços, analisando um contexto - Portugal - caracterizado por um relativo atraso em termos de desempenho inovador.
Metodologia:
Com base em uma amostra de 4.128 empresas (incluindo 1.489 de serviços) que responderam à Pesquisa Comunitária sobre Inovação (PCI/CIS) 2008, avaliamos, recorrendo a regressões logísticas, os determinantes do desempenho da inovação nas empresas portuguesas.
Resultados:
1) Os trabalhadores que possuem o 1º ciclo do ensino superior têm um impacto positivo e significativo na inovação das empresas de serviços, ao passo que os doutorados são prejudiciais para o desempenho inovador das empresas; 2) as empresas do setor dos serviços em geral, e as dos KIBS em particular, que efetivamente investem em atividade de P&D externa e interna são mais inovadoras; 3) fontes científicas externas de informação para inovação são críticas (e muito mais do que na indústria transformadora) para o desempenho inovador das empresas de serviços, especialmente dos KIBS; 4) da mesma forma para a indústria transformadora, a participação em atividades de inovação em cooperação com parceiros estrangeiros emerge como um fator-chave para o desempenho inovador das empresas de serviços.
Contribuições:
Explicita a influência de abertura das empresas e a importância relativa atribuída às distintas fontes de informação para a inovação nos resultados de inovação das empresas de serviços (e KIBS) face às empresas da indústria transformadora.
Palavras-chave:
Desempenho de inovação; Serviços; KIBS; Indústria Transformadora; Portugal
Texto completo disponível apenas em PDF.
Full text available only in PDF format.
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13
Evaluation process: Double Blind Review
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Supporting Agencies: This research has been financed by Portuguese Public Funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) in the framework of the UID/ECO/04105/2013 project.
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1
‘Droege et al. (2009) make a distinction between technologist and assimilation, whereas Djellal et al. (2013) mention an additional (the inversion) approach which emphasises the fundamental role of certain Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) in other sectors’ innovations.
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2
Freel (2005) considers that novel innovation is the new innovation for the industry (both in terms of product and process), and incremental innovation is new only to the company introducing it.
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3
Pires et al. (2008) advocate two types of innovation for products: pioneering innovation if the company has introduced a new innovation in the market, i.e., has introduced a product or service that is not a mere imitation of an already existing one; and product innovation, if the innovation introduced is new for the company alone.
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4
In their analysis, the authors considered two types of innovation: technological innovation (product innovation + process innovation) and non-technological innovation (organizational and marketing innovation).
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5
The authors consider 7 main types of information sources: internal to the company (e.g., know-how, work organization and communication within the company), cooperation relationships (with clients, suppliers, consultants, banks, among others), regional organization of knowledge (e.g., local university and research institutes), regional support organization (e.g., regional association of entrepreneurs and business incubators), financial support organizations (organizations that encourage innovation), national support organizations (e.g., national confederation of Finnish industries and chamber of commerce) and, finally, other external sources of information (e.g., fairs, congresses, internet, media, literature).
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6
In this work, Laursen and Salter (2004) created an index to measure the openness of English industrial firms to knowledge from their external environment. Thus, the greater the number of external information sources used by a company, the greater its “openness” to the attraction of this type of knowledge generated from the outside.
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7Since 1996 Portugal has been allocating public funds for the encouraging the professional insertion of PhDs in companies. However, by 2006 almost 70% of the companies that had hired their first PhD failed to apply to any R&D project managed by Portugal National Innovation Agency (AdI) (Barroca et al., 2015).
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
Jan-Mar 2016
History
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Received
18 Oct 2014 -
Accepted
11 Apr 2016