Achieving Sustainable Competitive Advantage Through Intellectual Capital and Corporate Character: The Mediating Role of Innovation

Abstract

This study aims to discuss the impacts of intellectual capital and corporate character on sustainable competitive advantage. The structural equation model is used to analyze the relationships between intellectual capital, corporate character and sustainable competitive advantage, which are mediated by technological innovation and business model innovation, based on a survey of 377 observations in China. The empirical results indicate that the intellectual capital and corporate character are as the doors that enterprises can open to acquire technological innovation and business model innovation, which are beneficial to achieving and maintaining sustainable competitive advantage. The findings provide some implications for entrepreneurs that their enterprises should focus on the coordination and balance of intellectual capital and corporate character for better achieving the perfect integration of cost leading strategy and differentiation strategy on the basis of mixing technological innovation and business model innovation together. Such strategy helps enterprises to realize sustained growth. This study provides scholars a new binary perspective to explore the source of sustainable competitive advantage.