A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Innovation as Value key in Enterprises: The Spanish Case
MariaJesus Luengo 1 and Maria Obeso 2
1 Department of Management Evaluation and Business Innovation, School of
Business Studies, University of Pais Vasco, Bilbao, Spain
2 Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Business and Economics,
University of Cantabria, Santander, Spain
mariajesus.luengo@ehu.es
maria.obeso@unican.es
Abstract: In the new knowledge economy, innovation is a fundamental tool in order to obtain competitive
advantages. In this sense, we present a unique research in the area where we use data published by Spanish
National Institute of Statistics and we discover a positive relationship between innovation results and external
information received in enterprises by market agents (exclude customers). Enterprises around the world should
incorporate innovation management in their strategies if they want to achieve success and survival. However,
innovation management in organizations is difficult because innovation is an intangible active and for the same
reason, empirical studies are difficult in this area, thus there is an interest in developing works with information
about the topic. The relationship between results and information sources in innovation shows the interest of
Spanish enterprises in external information in order to improve their innovation results. These innovation results
are really important for the development of organizations competitiveness. Therefore the cooperation of the
economy agents (not customers because sensitivity tests conducted to theexclusion of this variable) involved in
the value chain and the cooperation between competitors is essential with the purpose of maximize competitive
advantages. As a result, with this research we want to help to enterprises in their decision making process
related with innovation activity and amplifying the available information in the area at the moment. Moreover this
research contributes to academic world highlighting a fundamental relationship in the innovation area across the
Spanish case.
Keywords: innovation, market agents, competitiveness, causal relationship, external sources
1. Introduction
In the new knowledge economy, innovation is a fundamental tool in order to obtain competitive
advantages. In this sense, there is a positive relationship between innovation and the economy
growth (Chen and Dahlman, 2004). Economy theory (Solow, 1957; Romer, 1986) shows that the
technological progress is the best resource in order to increase productivity, and an efficient
innovation system is essential for society advance. For innovation system we understand institutions
networks, rules and procedures that increase knowledge acquisition, creation and use (Chen and
Dahlman, 2004).
In this sense, the aim of this paper is identify the relationship between the external sources of
information and the innovation results in businesses. This relationship is essential for the enterprises
that they want to improve their innovation results using external sources like customers, suppliers,
competitors and consultants (customers are excluded in this research because sensitivity tests
conducted to theexclusion of this variable). As consequently, we present a unique research in the
area where we use Spanish data in order to present a start point in innovation area.
We structure the paper as follows: first we offer a first approach about innovation concept, analyzing
its interest in present society and its value for the organizations across a bibliographic review. In the
next section, we present the methodology used for the empirical analysis, the sample, the years and
the selected variables. In the next section we present the empirical results and we show like
innovation results are related with external information provides by market agents. In the same
section, we develop the empirical results and finally, the last section includes the principal conclusions
about the research, the importance in innovation area and the future researches.
2. Theoretical background
Sawhneyet al.define business innovation as “the creation of substantial new value for customers and
the firm by creatively changing one or more dimensions of the business system” (2011, p. 28). For
business innovation, enterprises need innovation capability that is defined like the use of interesting
knowledge in order to implement creative ideas in the organization (Zhao et al., 2005).
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