Search capabilities and practices for discontinuos innovation: a test for constructs and measurement in Italian high tech companies

Past studies on innovation management described the process and identified models, drivers and ‘good practices’ which contribute to the management and success of the process itself, investigating different aspects of it. However, despite these extensive studies, attention was mainly paid to moderately dynamic environment, where the ‘rules of the game’ do not change. Only recently a growing number of authors has raised up the need to extend research efforts to innovation under discontinuous conditions: i.e. in complex environments. Management literature has highlighted that under discontinuous conditions incumbents have encountered serious obstacles in identifying, develop and commercialize innovations as traditional and validated ‘good’ approaches are not adequate, or even counterproductive. It is therefore necessary to identify and deploy the capabilities and routines that organisations could apply for enhancing their capacity to manage discontinuous innovation (DI). Based on a comprehensive literature review on search practices for DI and on the empirical background of the Discontinuous Innovation Lab - a research network covering around 180 firms in 12 countries - we developed a questionnaire submitted to a 600 high tech Italian firm sample (respondents are R&D directors or general managers). We identify four search for DI capabilities, each consisting of a bundle of interrelated yet distinct practices. We then empirically test the constructs and the measures for the capabilities as second-order latent variables by using the Structural Equation Modelling.