The Affect of Innovation Strategies and their Connect to Company Performance

Abstract

The management of innovation is made difficult by the complexity, unpredictability and pace of turbulence in the environment which compresses the time horizons for strategic planning and increases the investment risk The main purpose of this study was to investigate innovation management practices in technology intensive industries and to explore their relationship to company performance. A non-probability, judgment sample of companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) were taken. The study makes a contribution to the field of strategic management research by integrating the dimensions of several previous studies, to derive a more comprehensive taxonomy of innovation strategy dimensions. Two distinct innovation strategy factors obtained with the analysis were proved to positively influence the company performance dimensions and were classified as New Product Innovation and Process Innovation factors. The results show that innovation strategy choices can significantly affect company performance. It thereby indicates which of the underlying dimensions have the strongest relationship with company performance. From an industry perspective, the greatest significance of these findings may be that they accentuate the importance of innovation policy in strategic management. The substantial differences in performance associated with the dimensions do not necessarily indicate that a given company should choose a particular innovation strategy, but rather indicates that innovation policy decisions may have a substantial leverage on a company’s performance and should be analysed and exercised with care.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n9p60