The main intellectual capital components that are relevant to the product, process and management firm innovativeness

Abstract

This paper focuses on the influence of the human, structural and relational capital on the product-process and management innovativeness of the firm. A global model including variables used in previous literature is used and we establish hypotheses for testing this model and use statistic technique to estimate the parameters of the model in a sample. To do so, we use a survey from 68 firms working on the auto components sector, established in the Northern Spain and Northern Portugal. We found firstly, that innovativeness has two main dimensions, perfectly differentiated, the product-process innovation and the management innovation; secondly, that the intellectual capital components influences differently each type of innovation capacity (innovativeness). We concluded that the human and relational capital influence positive and directly the product-process innovativeness and that the structural capital influences positive and directly the management innovativeness. These results highlight the importance and influence of the intellectual capital on the innovativeness. Moreover, they point out the different character of product-process and management innovativeness.