Research on innovation capacity antecedents: distinguishing between family and non-family businesses

Abstract

This study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, it enhances the family business literature by focusing on innovation capacity as a facilitator in the innovation proces. Within the family business literature, this study investigates whether innovation capacity is influenced by the unique family business characteristics in order to get a better understanding of innovation in family businesses. Secondly, by doing this, we provide academics and policy makers insight in the innovation capacity of family firms and hence ways for improvement. This paper is organized as follows. We begin with a discussion of innovation capacity and its antecedents. We explain the proposed innovation capacity framework and the specific focus of this paper. Next, the four innovation antecedents are described and attention is paid to how these antecedents are influenced by the family characteristic of a firm. Furthermore, the empirical part of this paper is introduced and the results are discussed.