Enhancing radical innovation performance through intellectual capital components
Abstract
Purpose
In today’s knowledge economy the ability to innovate and develop new products is a key factor to sustain firm performance. Within this context, analysing the role of different components of intellectual capital (IC) becomes of foremost importance, as well as an under-investigated issue for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of human, organisational and relational capital (RC) on radical innovation performance (RIP), as well as to examine whether organisational capital (OC) and RC mediate the relationship between human capital (HC) and RIP and whether OC moderates the relationship between RC and RIP.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology consisted of a factor analysis and different regression models to test for mediation and moderation. The analyses are carried out on a sample of 150 micro firms and SMEs involved in the production of machinery or instruments and located in Italy.
Findings
Results show that HC is directly associated to RIP, as well as OC and RC that totally mediate the relationship between HC and RIP. Moreover, OC positively moderates the relationship between RC and RIP.
Originality/value
This study is particularly interesting because it adopts an overarching perspective on IC testing the interplay between the different components of IC. In addition, it focusses on the SME context which is under-investigated as far as IC and performance measurement is concerned.
Keywords
Citation
Agostini, L. and Nosella, A. (2017), "Enhancing radical innovation performance through intellectual capital components", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 18 No. 4, pp. 789-806. https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-10-2016-0103
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited