Intellectual Capital and a Firm's Innovativeness

Intellectual capital is increasingly considered a source of competitive advantage and is considered a major issue on the management and organization research. There is a lack of evidence about which are the main components that are more relevant to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage, such as innovation. There are different models and approaches that try to identify the effect of intellectual capital on a firm's performance. 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 the variables used in the previous literature is used and we establishes 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 also 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, and more broadly, the value of intellectual capital as a competitive advantage in contemporary time. Moreover, point out the different character of product-process and management innovativeness.