A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Christos Apostolakis, José Carlos Rodríguez and Mario Gómez
� Organisational resources must be valuable and strategically useful in a way that can be used to
exploit opportunities; they can also provide other qualities such as lower cost or differentiation in
products or services;
� They must be rare in the sense that they are not commonly possessed by competing
organisations; this would mean that this organisation can generate either superior margins or
superior sales volumes;
� Organisational resources must be imperfectly imitable by competitor organisations this meaning
that they have been created or acquired via unique conditions; in practical terms this would mean
an as long as possible rent stream accruing to the resource;
� Organisational resources must not be replaceable by this meaning that no equivalent valuable,
rare, and imperfectly imitable resources are available that could perhaps be used instead of this
organisation’s resources (Barney and Hesterly, 2012; Sanchez, 2003).
Attempting to complete the usefulness of the resource-based view approach someone would regard it
as representing the strengths and weaknesses of an organisation. In supplementary way, the external
environment (industry, local society, etc) could perhaps play the space for forming opportunities and
threats for the organisation. In this respect, an informal environment of a SWOT analysis could
perhaps be formed (Nham and Hoang, 2011). In summarising this part of the paper, resource-based
view primarily seeks to emphasise that a possession of strategically useful, heterogenous, and not
replicated by competitors resources constitutes the resource position of the firm among rivalry firms
(Wernerfelt, 1984). Having said that, living in times of ‘destructive mutations’, when organisations
have a relatively easy access to generic technologies, knowledge base and demand opportunities for
companies to hold unique resources within a firm’s internal boundaries are limited. As a result, the
effective use of strategic, but not core, resources opens up an alternative ways for organisations to be
distinctive (Sanchez, 2003).
Considering the resource-based view approach as a focal point, Sanchez (2003) argues that an open
system of resource stocks and flows would support efficient leverage of an organisation’s capabilities
through the convergence and ongoing interaction among resources, capabilities and control
principles. This system refers primarily to management processes used including determination on
how an organisation regards opportunities and threats from both its internal and external
environments. In this respect, management processes drive the building up of and leveraging of
resources and capabilities, which in return affect creation and sustainability of an organisation’s
operations and product. In essence these processes determine achievement of competitive
advantage (Figure 1). There are two particular aspects that interest this paper: a) the way resources
are embedded in the system of an organisation especially their link with other resources and how they
contribute to creating competitive advantage; b) how these resources affect management processes
within the organisation such as decisions about their allocation in completing particular task or the
manner these decisions are communicated in the context of an organisation.
How this model could then support creation of entrepreneurial innovation in a specific organisational
context? Bhide (2003) argues that planning and a comprehensive analytic approach are terms not
always known to all entrepreneurs. Although there are some astute entrepreneurs out there who
spend a lot of time in analysing and strategising extensively this doesn’t constitute the norm. This is
because entrepreneurs believe that initial analyses should be tested and modified where possible.
The other reason is that by the time an opportunity is investigated fully, it may no longer exist. Finally,
it is lack of resources that makes entrepreneurs unable in many cases to integrate analysis into action
and vice versa. It is this lack (or not) of resources that interests this paper and to what extent it can be
linked and support innovation in a specified implementation context. Having said this, it could be
argued that both entrepreneurship and the resource-based view adopt the same unit of analysis – the
resource – taking into account the different expressions of this resource according to the organisation
in consideration (Alvarez and Busenitz, 2008; Akio, 2005).
In this context, the role of knowledge and technology needs to be emphasised as a means of tools
that are fed by an organisation’s resources. According to Easterby-Smith and Prieto (2008)
knowledge is provided as a key organisational source and therefore being supported by technology it
contributes to development of an organisation’s competitive advantage. In this way, Lynch (2012)
adds that the role of knowledge and technology needs to be clarified and explained in a way that can
sustain this advantage too. In a more specified manner, Parker (2010) argues that knowledge
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