Does innovativeness of knowledge-intensive business services differ from other industries?

This article seeks to determine whether the innovative capabilities of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) do actually differ from other industries through comparing the innovation capacities and financial performance of KIBS with firms operating in other sectors (non-KIBS). Based upon a 1000-firm sample, the results of our estimated econometric model demonstrate that non-KIBS firms are in possession of significantly greater innovation capacities than KIBS firms. These differences were observed across factors such as organisational process innovation, the launch of already existing products in new markets, branding and new product designs. Nevertheless, as regards the actual importance attributed to product/service innovation, KIBS firms place a greater comparative importance on innovation in comparison with their non-KIBS peers. In addition, the empirical evidences display a significantly different range of effects of innovation capacities on financial performance and concludes that non-KIBS firms turn in better comparative performances than specialist KIBS firms.

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