Abstract:

Innovation has become a ‘magic word’ in management practice and economic policy as well as a guiding concept in economic research and theory. An innovative company is defined as a company that develops innovative products, services and internal processes. An innovative company 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 arises regarding how to measure the performance contribution of innovation in scientific studies to provide evidence of whether innovation really gives 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 application of R&D expenditures as general measure for innovation intensity is widely criticized in the literature as not being sufficient to measure innovativeness. Accordingly, the first part of this conceptual paper has developed a new predictor, which will be tested in this paper.