Abstract:

Innovation has become a ‘magic word’ in management practice and economic policy. An innovative company is defined as a company that develops innovative services, products and internal processes and is not a trend follower but a trend setter and can thus profit from a competitive advantage. Therefore, innovation is received as the actual path to growth because the assumption is that innovation is the success driver for the firm and increases its value disproportionally. However, innovation initially results in only costs and risks. Thus, the question occurs regarding how to measure the performance contribution of innovation in scientific studies to provide evidence whether innovation really pays back, particularly in the context of the concept of second mover advantage, which questions the idea of first mover advantage and favors imitation instead of innovation. Therefore, the first part of this conceptual paper criticizes recent studies and develops an own approach, which wil be tested in paper’s second part. To prepare this test, the first part develops a predictor based on a case study.