What is the role of innovation strategies? Evidence from Spanish firms

Abstract

This paper discusses the determinants of two alternative measures of innovative success/output by looking at firm's innovation strategies. These relationships are also discussed by distinguishing between firms belonging to manufacturing and services sectors.Our econometric analysis is based on an extensive sample of 3,919 firms taken from the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel (PITEC) for the period 2008-2012. Alongside the empirical analysis we applied a two-step procedure. We first identified a diverse range of innovation strategies by applying a principal component analysis (absence, mixed and oriented). Then, after controlling for positive skewness of the dependent variables, we used a generalized linear model (GLM) to examine the impact of these strategies. Our empirical results have some interesting aspects. Firstly, firms that do not design innovation strategies have a lower probability of being a successful innovative firm. Secondly, firms that design a strategy, but one that is not oriented on any specific direction, are prone to achieving lower success rates than firms with an oriented strategy. Finally, the results also show that there is a good fit between the oriented strategy pursued by a firm and its innovation success.