Conceptualising firm level innovativeness and its strategic antecedents

Despite the increasing importance attributed to firm level innovativeness within the literature, conceptualising the phenomenon remains a neglected issue. Nevertheless, despite the lack of conceptualisations, the term innovativeness has been widely used in the literature but with a mix of interpretations, and often used interchangeably with its antecedents and its output, innovation. Consequently, the innovativeness concept and its strategic antecedents still lack clarity. This knowledge deficit is also having subsequent effects on practice. Indeed, the lack of a comprehensive conceptualisation means that innovativeness is difficult to achieve and remains a central dilemma for most firms. This study aims to close this knowledge gap by dimensionalising innovativeness and presenting the strategic practices that enhance it and, in so doing, will obtain a diagnostic tool that can be used by firms to assess and improve their level of innovativeness. A systematic review of the literature was utilised to conceptualise innovativeness as a global, multidimensional construct. Adopting a positivistic approach, data was gathered from 500 firms utilising a mail survey, resulting in a 35.7% response rate. The key finding of this research is that innovativeness is a global, multidimensional construct consisting of risk taking, creativity, receptivity and proactiveness. Indeed, the innovativeness construct explained 68.2% of the covariance between these dimensions (first order factors), which indicates that it is the bundling of these dimensions that captures the dynamic nature of the innovativeness capability. In addition, this study also identified that the strategic practices of: leadership consistency, leveraging knowledge processes, and applied leveraging knowledge were the determinants of innovativeness. Finally, it is perceived that the study makes several methodological contributions in the form of scale development and measurement, and provides a significant contribution to practice and academic understanding concerning the nature of innovativeness and the explanatory power of this study’s proposed antecedents to innovativeness.