Competences and Innovation

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 2,0, Free University of Berlin (Management ), course: Seminar: Innovative Organization, language: English, abstract: The ability of certain companies being more successful in innovations resulted in a broad academic discussion and did not find an end yet. On the one hand, academics are convinced that the ability of being innovative lies anywhere within the organization, on the other hand there persists a strong belief that the ability depends on the markets and the fit with the firm¿s strategy.

It is known that innovations are of fundamental importance for the development, improvement and prosperity of economies and firms. According to Schumpeter innovations represent corporate achievements and a creation and enforcement process of new combinations, whereby a ¿creative destruction¿ of the economical equilibrium is caused. Consequently, a considered need for change and the ability to enforce and support this change is required to lead to successful innovation.

In my study I want to derive the well-spring of firm¿s success, focusing on the internal perspective of the company. The resource based view provides the theoretical concept, leading to the advanced approach to display firm¿s competences as a source of economic welfare. The importance of competences to build innovations comes clearly into mind, since the innovation process is very intangible and abstract, yet you need competences to organize, combine and deploy the tangible and intangible input factors to build innovations.