ARTICLE

The influence of knowledge related to innovative performance

 

Juan Carlos Leiva and Ronald Brenes-Sanchez

Costa Rica Institute of Technology, Cartago, Costa Rica

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Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to assess knowledge relatedness as a possible determinant of business innovatión performance. Knowledge relatedness is understood as the degree of similarity between a firm’s knowledge and that of its parent, i.e. the company that the entrepreneur leaves to establish his or her own firm. Innovatión performance results from the competitive positión that the company achieves through its management of new products and serviceson the market.

Design/methodology/approach – For the empirical work, the authors used a database composed of 356 entrepreneurs who established recently their own business in Costa Rica: people who stopped working in multinatiónal companies in Costa Rica and created their own businesses, and people who created their own businesses simultaneously as the former employees of multinatiónals.

Findings – This paper reports a positive and significant correlatión between knowledge relatedness and innovatión performance for a number of young firms. Originality/value – This paper presents the fact of including knowledge relatedness as a research topic linked to business innovatión.

Keywords Entrepreneurial learning, Business innovatión, Young firm performance

Paper type Research paper

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Introductión

The factors that determine business innovatión performance can be grouped into three broad categories: contextual, organizatiónal and personal (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010). There is evidence that many variables related to these categories affect innovatión performance. However, understanding all of the factors that affect innovatión performance, particularly if we refer to micro and small-sized businesses (which are the most numerous in most countries), remains an open questión (Faherty and Stephens, 2016; Fernández et al., 2012). Knowledge relatedness has not been studied as a possible determinant of innovatión performance. Knowledge relatedness is understood as the degree of similarity between a company’s knowledge with respect to its parent company, i.e. the company that the entrepreneur left to found his/her own company. (Sapienza et al., 2004; West and Noel, 2009). However, knowledge relatedness has been linked to overall business performance (West and Noel, 2009; Sapienza et al., 2004). There are two positións in this correlatión.one maintains that there is a positive and linear correlatión between the similarity of knowledge and business performance (West and Noel, 2009). The other stance considers that there is a somewhat curvilinear, inverted U-shaped relatiónship (Sapienza et al., 2004). This may imply that there is greater performance when there is no extreme, either of knowledge completely related to the parent company or to the contrary.

This paper aims to assess knowledge relatedness as a possible determinant of business innovatión performance. Given that it is an unprecedented approach, it is expected to contribute to the understanding of the factors that affect business innovatión performance, particularly in start-ups. The empirical applicatión is performed in Costa Rica, whose economy mainly comprises small and micro businesses; therefore, it is also expected to provide a contributión from that perspective, given that studieson innovatión are mainly basedon large businesses in developed countries (Faherty and Stephens, 2016).

This issue is relevant because the world is continually moving toward an economy that is governed by knowledge and innovatión and there is consensus in various areas that "the generatión, exploitatión and diffusión of knowledge are fundamental to economic growth, development and the well-being of natións" (Mortensen and Bloch, 2005, p. 3).

Our results show a positive and significant correlatión between knowledge relatedness and innovatión performance for a number of newly established firms in Costa Rica. It is interesting to note that no differences are found in the results when the assessment is basedon the founder’s prior business experience and the type of company that he/she left to start his/her own business.

The theoretical framework, methodology, results and conclusións are presented later in the text.

Theoretical framework

The relatiónship between knowledge relatedness and innovatión performance has not been directly studied in the literature. In general, business innovatión is a somewhat complex subject that can be studied from different approaches. A first approach is dimensión. Dimensión can be divided into two perspectives: processes versus results. For example, from the processes perspective, the (individual, group, organizatiónal) level, the (internal versus external) sources and their locus (firm or networks), among others, may be analyzed. Additiónally, concerning results, the forms (products, services, business models), magnitude (incremental, radical) and type (administrative or technical), among others, may be analyzed. A second approach is to study the determinants, which may be contextual, organizatiónal and personal (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010; Flor and Oltra, 2004). In this sectión, the literature regarding the determinants of innovatión performance and, subsequently, the concept of knowledge relatedness, are reviewed to then connect them in the empirical part of this paper.

The determinants of business innovatión performance

As stated above, the factors that determine business innovatión performance can be grouped into three broad categories: contextual, organizatiónal and personal (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010).

There are various approaches in the contextual level for attempting to understand the determinants of business innovatión.one is the study of geographical areas with a high concentratión of innovative companies. These have been examined from various theoretical perspectives with a number of explanatory factors, such as external economies, social relatiónships, the creatión of tacit knowledge and the need for companies to be more flexible and competitive in globalized environments, leading them to create supplier and partner networks that must be close, in additión to organizatiónal routines and path dependency (Simmie, 2005). A second approach is to consider natiónal innovative capacity, understood as the (political and economic) ability of a natión to constantly produce and commercialize a flow of innovative technologies for everyone in the long term (Furman et al., 2002).

According to its proponents, this ability is determined by a common infrastructure for innovatión (i.e. human capital, financing, educatión and training investment, protectión of intellectual property, etc.) and the specific environment for cluster innovatión (i.e. competitive strategies of firms, demand conditións, related and support industries, etc.) Continuing with the perspective of the environment, another approach is to analyze the determinants of innovatión that result from the particular context of firms, with factors such as uncertainty and complexity (Tidd, 2001), relatiónships or networking with that environment (Chen et al., 2011; Pittaway, et al., 2004), relatiónal capital (Capello 2002) and absorptión capacity (Liao et al., 2007; Chen et al., 2009).

The second level of analysis of the determinants of innovatión is organizatiónal. In this regard, various determinants have been identified, such as structural capital (Santos et al., 2011), implementatión capacity (Klein and Knight, 2005), company size (Camison-Zornoza et al., 2004), technological trajectory (Souitaris, 2002), operatiónal strategy (Alegre et al., 2004) and entrepreneurial orientatión (Fernández et al., 2012). At this level of analysis, in a pióneering study, Damanpour (1991) links innovatión performance to a number of organizatiónal factors such as specializatión, functiónal differentiatión, professiónalizatión, managerial attitude toward change and technical knowledge.

The third level of analysis is personal. In this regard, the determining personal factors of innovatión can be grouped into three broad categories according to their origin: factors that result from the individual, from the work environment and from the social environment (Anderson et al., 2014). Some factors arising from the individual as such and that are listed as determinants of innovatión are as follows: personality (Raja and Johns, 2010), goals orientatión (Hirst et al., 2009; Gong et al., 2009), the values of the individual (Shin and Zhou, 2003), knowledge (Howell and Boies, 2004) and motivatión (Yuan and Woodman, 2010). Regarding the work environment, the determinants vary between the complexity of the work (Shalley et al., 2009), the goals and requirements of the positión (Ohly and Fritz, 2010; Baer and Oldham, 2006) and rewards (Baer et al., 2003). The factors linked to the social environment are leadership and supervisión (Tierney, 2008 cited by Anderson et al., 2014), the influence of customers (Madjar & Ortiz-Walters, 2008), the feedback received (De Stobbeleir et al., 2011) and social networks or contacts (Baer, 2010).

In additión, some studies have sought to simultaneously relate various determinants with innovatión performance. For example, Hadjimanolis (2000) attempts to link a number of variables (grouped into three broad categories: the characteristics of the entrepreneur, of the firms and of the environment). He finds that business-related variables [i.e. strategy, expenditureon research and development (R&D), cooperatión with external providers] are more related to a better innovatión performance than the other two in the case of small and medium-sized businesses in Cyprus. For their part, Guzmán and Martínez (2008) conduct the same study for Spanish micro businesses and find a stronger link between superior innovative performance and the personal characteristics of entrepreneurs versus the contextual determinants of their companies.

Knowledge relatedness

This paper aims to link innovatión performance to knowledge relatedness. The latter concept may be defined as the degree of similarity between a company’s knowledge with respect to its parent company, i.e. the company that the entrepreneur left to found his/her own company (Sapienza et al., 2004; West and Noel, 2009).

From the theoretical review, it follows that this concept has not been linked to innovatión performance. It is interesting to note that the concept of knowledge relatedness somehow refers to two determining factors of innovatión, personal and organizatiónal characteristics.

For this reason, the entrepreneur has the capacity to visualize and replicate in his/her company the strategies of the organizatión in which he/she previously worked as an employee. This is also not implemented alone, given that, in the new organizatión, this acquired knowledge is applied in accordance with other actors (employees, partners, suppliers, etc.). Accordingly,one can speak of a process of personal entrepreneurial learning that absorbs knowledge from the company in which he/she previously worked and that is expressed in an organizatiónal environment in which strategies, routines and processes are developed (in the new firm created by the entrepreneur) (Rae and Carswell, 2001).

Research on knowledge relatedness as an influential factor in organizatiónal performance has been conducted, although, as noted above, without considering innovatión performance. In that regard, there are basically two approaches.one posits that there is a positive and linear relatiónship between the similarity of knowledge and business performance (West and Noel, 2009). The other view states that the correlatión between knowledge relatedness and performance is curvilinear, in the shape of an inverted U (Sapienza et al., 2004). This may imply that there is greater performance when there is no extreme, either of knowledge completely related to the parent company or otherwise (with no relatión).

As noted above, the empirical evidence is contradictory. In their study, conducted among US biotech companies, West and Noel (2009) conclude that there is a relatiónship between knowledge relatedness and performance, understanding the former as the experience that the entrepreneur had, before creating his/her company, working in other similar companies. However, Sapienza et al. (2004) study 54 industrial spin-off companies in Finland and find that the relatiónship between knowledge relatedness and performance in these companies is curvilinear, an inverted U-shaped relatiónship. The reason is that very little knowledge relatedness hinders the search for new knowledge and its assimilatión, but great knowledge relatedness is an obstacle to the creatión of new combinatións of knowledge.

It is worth noting that knowledge relatedness is a concept that has been defined in various ways. For example, in additión to the approach outlined in this article, it has been defined as the degree of similarity and compatibility between the knowledge of two individuals or organizatións (Weber and Weber, 2010) and the degree to which a company with multiple businesses uses common knowledge through its business units (Tanriverdi and Venkatraman, 2005).

Therefore, this paper aims to understand the relatiónship between knowledge relatedness, that is, the degree of similarity between the knowledge of a company with respect to its parent company and the innovatión performance of the new company created by the entrepreneur.

Methodology

Sample

For the empirical work, we used a database composed of 356 entrepreneurs who established their own business basically from two sources: the records of the Foreign Trade Corporatión of Costa Rica (Promotora de Comercio de Costa Rica -PROCOMER),on people who stopped working in multinatiónal companies in Costa Rica and created their own businesses and data from the social security regarding people who created their own businesses simultaneously as the former employees of multinatiónals. The data collectión was performed by phone and outsourced to a polling agency.

Variables

The variables under study and their definitión are explained below.

The dependent variable is called the Innovatión Performance Index (IP Index), which is understood as the competitive positión achieved by the company through the management of its new products and serviceson the market (Akgun et al., 2007). Specifically, for our work, a measurement of a subjective nature by Akgun et al. (2007) was used; it consists of four questións that relate the competitive environment of the firm with the following elements: the time of the new product introductión, the perceived novelty of these productson the market, the competitive positión and the overall introductión of new products and novel services in a given time range.

The independent variable, i.e. related knowledge, was generated from three sub-indices that compare the degree of similarity between business strategies, logistics-operatións and marketing of the new company founded, and the predecessor that the entrepreneur left to establish his/her own company. To that end, the same study questión raised by West and Noel (2009) was applied; however, following Sapienza et al. (2004), it was raised in the three noted topics.

All questións were basedon a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (minimum) to 10 (maximum). For each case, the values from 0 to 100 were standardized and simple averages were subsequently calculated. In the case of the indices of knowledge relatedness, a General Index of Similarities was additiónally estimated by contemplating the average of the three original indices (strategies, logistics-operatións and marketing).

Two control variables were considered.one concerned whether the entrepreneur was a former employee of a multinatiónal company based in Costa Rica before creating his/her company. The other was the entrepreneur’s previous experience as an entrepreneur in another firm.

The questións used and the theoretical basis of each can be observed in Appendix.

Statistical analysis

To study the relatiónship between knowledge relatedness and innovatión performance, the following two regressión models were proposed:

IP_Index = a + b ₁S : Index_BS + b ₂S : Index_LO + b ₃S : Index_MS     (1)

IP_Index = a + b ₁GS_Index     (2)

 

where

IP_index          corresponds to Innovatión Performance Index;

S. Index_BS      corresponds to the Similarity Index of Business Strategy;

S. Index_LO      corresponds to the Similarity Index of Logistics and Operatións;

S . Index_MS     corresponds to the Similarity Index of Market Strategy; and

GS_Index          corresponds to the General Index of Similarities.

 

Results

Table I shows some descriptive results of the indices under study. It is interesting to note the relatively low proportión of knowledge relatedness of all of the types presented in the overall sample.

Table II shows the bivariate correlatións between the indices under study.

The next step of the analysis was to estimate the impact of the following control variables: previous experience as an entrepreneur and provenance of a multinatiónal company for both cases of the entrepreneurial founder of the company under study.once the estimates were calculated,only the second, the provenance of the entrepreneurial founder from a multinatiónal company, was required; it yielded a significant mean difference at the 0.01 level (bilateral).

From this result, a regressión analysis was performed, as stated in the methodology but including the control variable: the provenance of the entrepreneurial founder of the company under study from a multinatiónal company as a former employee. Table III shows the results.

The above results show that both the provenance from a multinatiónal variable and the similarity indices are not significant individually; therefore, there is no linear relatiónship between them and innovatión performance.

Based on the above, it was decided that the second regressión analysis would be conducted by includingonly the General Index of Similarities without prior control variables. Table IV shows whether there is a significant correlatión.

Here, although R² is slightly lower, the model remains significant, and the General Index of Similarities is actually highly significant. According to the value of the coefficient, it can be assumed that there is a positive relatiónship between innovatión performance and the similarities viewed as a whole.

Discussión

This study is conducted with the objective of assessing knowledge relatedness as a possible determinant of business innovatión performance. The findings are such that for the companies analyzed in this paper, there is a positive relatiónship between knowledge relatedness and innovatión performance. Knowledge relatedness is understood as the degree of similarity between the knowledge of a company with respect to its parent company, i.e. the company that the entrepreneur left to found his/her own company. Additiónally, innovatión performance is viewed as the competitive positión achieved by the company through the management of its new products and serviceson the market.

From the theoretical perspective, this article contributes to identifying possible factors that affect innovatión performance. According to the literature, there are three broad categories of influential factors in innovatión performance: contextual, organizatiónal and personal (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010). Knowledge relatedness, as defined here, joins the list of factors of a personal nature that may affect innovatión performance.

These personal factors that may affect innovatión performance are in turn subdivided into individual, labor and social factors (Anderson et al., 2014). This paper identifies knowledge relatedness as a factor that is linked to the individual as such (his/ her level of knowledge) and to the social environment in which he/she operates (expressed in the company in which he/she previously worked and acquired knowledge that was applied in his/her own company). For example, these results are in line with those of Howell and Boies (2004), who establish the individual’s knowledge as an influential element of personal innovatión performance.

Adding knowledge relatedness as a possible factor affecting innovatión performance acquires more relevance in regard to small and medium-sized businesses. Indeed, there is evidence that in such companies (which are the majority in all countries worldwide), the personal factors of the company’s entrepreneurial founders are the most relevant when explaining innovatión performance (Faherty and Stephens, 2016; Guzmán and Martínez, 2008).

Another interesting theoretical perspective of the results is the link that can be made between the literatureon small and medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurship.on theone hand, and as noted above, knowledge relatedness may be considered an influential factor in innovatión performance and thus in the overall performance of the company (Ezzi and Jarboui, 2016). Regarding entrepreneurship,one interesting finding is that the entrepreneurial founder’s previous business experience and the provenance of the founder of the company under study from a multinatiónal company (control variables) do not affect the relatiónship between knowledge relatedness and innovatión performance. In this regard, the result is striking, given that there is evidence of the impact of entrepreneurs’ previous experienceon company performance (West and Noel, 2009; Barringer and Jones, 2007). Regarding the provenance from a multinatiónal company, the evidence contradicts what our result provides inone sense of the relatiónship (Görg and Strobl, 2005; Vera and Dutrénit, 2007, Leiva et al., 2014).

This paper has practical implicatións as well. For entrepreneurs who establish an organizatión and do not have access to sources of knowledge relatedness, it is important to attempt to build such knowledge in other businesses or organizatións that may take the role of a source of knowledge. We refer to suppliers, partners or members of a network of contacts that may generate a platform for these entrepreneurs from which they can acquire some type of knowledge relatedness that is applicable to their undertaking.on the public policy side, this work reinforces the need to strengthen business ecosystems that enable the creatión of communicatión channels through which new entrepreneurs and such ecosystems (experienced entrepreneurs, partner companies, investors, academy and consultants) may generate and share knowledge.

As with any research, this study has limitatións. The sample of selected companies may not be representative and is contextual to a natión such as Costa Rica. This paper does not explain relatiónships or perform qualitative analyses to understand the nature of the phenomenon; it isonly a quantitative perspective.

These limitatións delimit ºpossible topics for future research. For example, it would be interesting to explore how knowledge acquisitión occurs as well as its subsequent applicatión in the companies created by entrepreneurs. It would also be interesting to study the phenomenon from another perspective that may correspond to the type of company that acts as a provider of knowledge. As shown in this study, no evidence that the type of company (multinatiónal versus another) made a difference was found.

Finally, we wish to emphasize that this article presents the fact of including knowledge relatedness as a research topic linked to business innovatión.

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Received 4 March 2017

12 March 2017

9 September 2017

Accepted 9 March 2018

 

Appendix

 

Corresponding author

Juan Carlos Leiva can be contacted at: jleiva@itcr.ac.cr