Exploring antecedents of service innovation performance in manufacturing SMEs

Abstract

Various factors enable manufacturing firms to attain a competitive advantage based on service innovation – that is, to achieve service innovation performance. Starting from a dynamic capabilities perspective, this article predicts that absorptive capacity is one such critical factor, which in turn may be driven by employee collaboration and the firm’s search breadth. The findings of a survey study of small to medium-sized Dutch manufacturing firms confirm that employee collaboration and search breadth have positive effects on an organization’s potential absorptive capacity, whereas employee collaboration also reinforces its realized absorptive capacity. Thus realized absorptive capacity ultimately enhances service innovation performance. The results have implications for dynamic capabilities theory, and they provide practitioners with potential means to outperform their competitors in service innovation efforts.