¿Qué necesita una empresa para innovar? Investigación, experiencia y persistencia

This paper examines what factors a firm needs to innovate, under the framework of the Resource-based view and Capabilities Theory. Thus, the innovation capacity is a key learning capability and, in the proposed model, is defined as R&D activities and innovation experience. Using panel data for empirical testing allows a longitudinal and dynamic analysis to be made. The sample is representative of the Spanish manufacturing industry and comprises a total of 12,083 observations for 1,781 firms over a maximum period of nine years. Results from different estimations show that R&D activities and past experience in innovation are the most important explanatory variables. Manufacturing technological sophistication, commercial resources, and some environmental factors are also regularly associated with the probability of generating innovations. The study of R&D persistence sheds more light on this topic: firms with repeated R&D investments are less dependent on other complementary factors. In short, research, experience and persistence are the crucial ingredients for innovation in the manufacturing sector.