Innovativeness: Redefining the concept

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to highlight the need to reconceptualize the theoretical construct of innovativeness. There is a large body of research on the adoption of innovations. Although research studies in this area are motivated by fundamentally different objectives, there is a common thread that runs through all of them - the identification of innovative firms. In order to identify innovative firms, a variety of unidimensional measures of innovativeness have been employed in past research. Thus, innovation diffusion research studies have used the time of innovation adoption as a measure of a firm's innovativeness. Other studies have assessed innovativeness on the basis of the number of innovation adoptions. This research contends that the conceptualization of innovativeness as a unidimensional construct is incomplete. Innovativeness, we believe, is an enduring trait that is consistently exhibited by innovative firms over a period of time. In other words, a valid measure of innovativeness must represent this temporal dimension. This study proposes and tests the validity of a multidimensional measure of innovativeness.