THE ROLE OF INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL ASSETS ON THE RADICALNESS OF INNOVATION: DIRECT AND MODERATING EFFECTS

This paper proposes a model on the radicalness of innovation from „An Intellectual Capital-Based View‟, based on a sample of 251 Spanish technology-based manufacturing firms. Thus, we examine how human, organizational, technological, relational and social capitals influence incremental and radical innovations in different way. In general terms, results regarding direct effects show a greater positive influence of human capital on radical innovations than on incremental ones, being the opposite effect in the case of organizational, technological, relational and social capitals. And, taking into account the moderating effect of human capital on the relationship between relational capital and radical innovations, results show the importance of human capital when a firm tries to achieve a radical innovation by means of external relationships. INTRODUCTION Knowledge Economy (Grant, 1996; Dean and Kretschmer, 2007) is characterized by the economic globalization, advances of the technological domains, the progressive primacy of services sector, accelerated product cycles, and changes in the customer‟s needs and preferences. Hence, a new competitive dynamic is appearing (Johnson, Neave and Pazderka, 2002; Leitner, 2005; Díaz-Díaz, Aguilar-Díaz and De Saá-Pérez, 2008), in which firms give increasingly importance to intangible resources and capabilities when they face competitors, recognizing that new knowledge and its effective implementation are key factors in achieving and maintaining competitive advantages (Galende, 2006). In this competitive arena, one of the best ways for reaching firm competitive advantage position comes directly from continuous technological innovations. Thus, that new competitive dynamic leads us to pay attention to the technological innovations achievement as a key aspect for business success (Tushman and Nadler, 1986; Salman and Saives, 2005; Galende, 2006; O‟Connor and DeMartino, 2006; Molina-Castillo and Munuera-Alemán, 2009; among others), using intangible resources and capabilities owned by a firm, that is, its intellectual capital. Concretely, Yam, Cheng, Fai and Tang (2004) state that technological innovation can entail positive impacts, increasing the competitiveness of a firm. So, if a firm tries to survive and thrive within that kind of environment it should be continuously updated (Danneels, 2002). This issue has been analyzed by several empirical studies, concluding a-priori that intangible factors owned by a firm -specific intellectual capital-, have a more significant influence on innovation results (Bowman and Helfat, 2001; Subramaniam and Youndt, 2005; Reed, Lubatkin and Srinivasan, 2006). Therefore, it can be said that the innovative capability of a certain firm depends very closely on the intellectual assets and knowledge that it possesses, as well as on its ability to deploy them, viewing the innovation process as intensive knowledge management process (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Nevertheless, as Galende and De la Fuente (2003) point out, a good piece of research is devoted to address the innovation processes from an external perspective, leaving aside the internal complexity that characterizes the innovation dynamic. In this sense, even though the basic link between firm knowledge and innovation is on the whole so persuasive,