Purpose - Innovation management as a profession is gaining importance. Personal certification within the field has become a newly developing trend, however, this aspect has not been studied much. Therefore, our master thesis explores the individual level motivations and de-motivation to enter the professional certification within innovation management. In addition, the work aimed at identifying the perceived effects of having an innovation management professional certification on individuals and organizations. Finally, our master thesis discusses whether professionalization and IMP certification can contribute to innovation capabilities and innovation performance.   Design/methodology - The study uses a comparative research design that includes semi-structured interviews of eighteen innovation management professionals (12 certified and 6 non-certified). The responses of the innovation professionals were thematically analyzed and categorized into nine final themes answering the research questions. Findings/result -Several motivations were identified, out of which the frequent were personal interest, knowledge enhancement, quality mark and innovation management terminology, the motivators to take up certification. While indifference, in-house certification and aversion for standardization are found to be strong de-motivators to not take up the certifications. After identifying the motivations, the perceived effects from taking up certification on an individual level are confirmation of knowledge, network expansion and pioneers in certification, and assignment of new tasks, effective communication was spotted as the perceived effects to the organization. It is however too early to arrive at a consensus whether professionalization and innovation management certification contributes to innovation capabilities and innovation performance. Conclusion - The certification process as a whole is considered as an attempt in terms of professionalizing the field of innovation management that showed some potential benefits as well as contradictions. It might take a few years more for innovation management to fully blossom into a developed profession through certifications. Limitations - If the professionalization of innovation management was more mature, providing an established theoretical framework and concept testing would have been beneficial to include in our study.

Innovation is one of the most important elements concerning higher performance in company efficiency. This methodical definition takes a look at the main benefits of on innovation on efficiency and hence on the efficiency and performance on the company as a whole, presenting the possibility of measurement of innovation efficiency and establishing defined methods for its improvement exploiting the development of innovation potential This particular issue is topical not only by reason of competitiveness of our companies but also maintaining share market and surviving the current economic crisis. Well managed and successfully introduced innovation into the market represents the tool for the companies, by means of which they can reach competitive advantages, enabling their prosperity in this slump. Every company has a certain innovation potential which should be explored, supported, utilized and systematically developed. The doctoral thesis focuses on the achievement of two basic goals, the cognitional and the inventive goal as well as confirmation or disconfirmation of set hypothesis. The first cognitional goal analyzes the present situation of solved questions, where current opinions and theories of our local and foreign experts are presented concerning innovation and company development. Basic definitions dealing with solved problems are described here as well. Various factors of innovation performance development are being carried out with the help of secondary and finally also primary research in Czech companies. The second related inventive goal is focused on design of methodical approach of increasing innovation performance that can be used in Czech companies. Contributions of the academic dissertation for theory and its contribution for corporation development and managerial practice are emphasized in the end part thesis.

[pt] O fenômeno da inovação e a forma como ele contribui para o desempenho das firmas depende de várias variáveis, como as características da firma, as suas estratégias, a indústria e o ambiente. O Brasil não é reconhecido como tendo um ambiente amigável para a inovação, ao contrário da maioria dos países europeus, e isto pode ser uma das razões pelas quais o país está travado em seu desenvolvimento econômico. Considerando o que foi mencionado acima, esta tese tem como objetivo contribuir explorando a relação entre P e D interno e externo, desempenho de inovação e desempenho financeiro nas firmas de manufatura brasileiras e de alguns países europeus e comparar as duas realidades para tirar lições sobre como as firmas brasileiras podem evoluir no seu desempenho de inovação e no seu desempenho financeiro. A estratégia para atingir esse objetivo foi propor um modelo teórico e algumas hipóteses baseadas em uma extensa revisão bibliográfica dos campos de gestão de inovação e estratégia e testá-los através de modelagem de equações estruturais (SEM), utilizando a estimativa bayesiana. Para testar o modelo no contexto brasileiro, utilizou-se uma amostra de 2.810 firmas de manufatura que realizaram atividades de inovação entre 2009 e 2011 da pesquisa de inovação brasileira PINTEC 2011. Para o contexto europeu, tomou-se uma amostra de 2.745 firmas de manufatura de 14 países (Bulgária, República Checa, Chipre, Espanha, Croácia, Portugal, Hungria, Eslovênia, Noruega, Lituânia, Romênia, Itália, Eslováquia e Estônia) da Pesquisa de Inovação da Comunidade (CIS) 2010, que considerou os anos de 2008 a 2010. No caso do Brasil, uma relação positiva direta entre alianças estratégicas e desempenho de inovação foi detectada. O P e D interno, por outro lado, não influenciou diretamente o desempenho da inovação, no entanto, moderou positivazmente a relação entre alianças estratégicas e inovação, o que é consistente com a teoria da capacidade absortiva. Ao contrário da teoria, o desempenho de inovação teve uma influência negativa no desempenho financeiro futuro. Esta relação negativa pode ter sido causada pelo atraso de dois anos entre as proxies desses dois construtos do modelo, que não permitiu identificar um aumento nas receitas obtidas pelos novos produtos e serviços, mas permitiu capturar o efeito negativo do redirecionamento de recursos do marketing e vendas para atividades de inovação, como P e D interno, e dos custos gerenciais das alianças estratégicas. Para os países europeus, a análise empírica detectou uma relação positiva entre o P e D interno e externo (de alianças estratégicas) e o desempenho de inovação separadamente. Contrariamente às expectativas, não se encontrou uma moderação do P e D interno na relação entre as alianças estratégicas e o desempenho de inovação. Isso provavelmente foi provocado pela baixa capacidade absortiva das firmas nos países europeus estudados em comparação com os países mais inovadores da Europa e mundialmente. O desempenho de inovação não influenciou o desempenho financeiro. Isso pode ter sido causado pela ausência de um intervalo de tempo entre a medida das proxies desses dois construtos, o que não permitiu identificar um aumento nas receitas de novos produtos e serviços, que leva algum tempo para ser percebido. Os resultados de ambos os modelos sugeriram que, se o principal objetivo é uma melhoria imediata nos níveis de desempenho da inovação, as firmas de manufatura devem se concentrar em P e D interno ou externo. No entanto, se o objetivo principal é o longo prazo, começar por fortalecer o P e D interno é mais efetivo para melhorar a capacidade absortiva das firmas e ao mesmo tempo alcançar um desempenho de inovação satisfatório. Esta estratégia permitirá que elas adotem estratégias mais complexas, equilibrando o P e D interno e externo, de forma efetiva no futuro, quando o nível de capacidade absortiva se tornar alto. / [en] The innovation phenomenon and how it contributes to the firms performance is contingent on several variables, such as the firm s characteristics, its strategies, the industry and the environment. Brazil is not recognized as having a friendly environment for innovation, in contrast with most of the European countries, and this issue may be one of the reasons why the country is stuck in its economic development. Considering all mentioned above, this dissertation aims to contribute by exploring the relationships among internal and external R and D, innovation performance and financial performance in the Brazilian and in some European countries manufacturing firms and compare both realities to learn lessons about how Brazilian firms may evolve in their innovation and financial performance. The strategy to achieve this goal was to propose a theoretical model and some hypotheses based on an extensive literature review of the innovation management and strategy fields and test them through structural equation modeling (SEM), using Bayesian estimation. In order to test the model in the Brazilian context, a sample of 2,810 manufacturing firms that conducted innovation activities from 2009 to 2011 of the Brazilian innovation survey PINTEC 2011 was used. For the European context, the sample had 2,745 manufacturing firms of 14 countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Spain, Croatia, Portugal, Hungary, Slovenia, Norway, Lithuania, Romania, Italy, Slovakia and Estonia) of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2010, which considered the years of 2008 to 2010. In the case of Brazil, a positive direct relationship between strategic alliances and innovation performance was detected. Internal R and D, on the other hand, did not influence innovation performance directly, however, it positively moderated the relationship between strategic alliances and innovation, which is consistent with the absorptive capacity theory. Contrary to the theory, innovation performance had a negative influence on the future financial performance. This negative relationship may have been caused by the two-years lag between the proxies of the two constructs of the model, that did not identify an increasing in revenues achieved by the new products and services, but captured the negative effect of the redirection of resources from marketing and sales to innovation activities, such as internal R and D, and of the managerial costs of the strategic alliances. For the selected European countries, the empirical analysis detected a positive relationship between internal and external R and D (from strategic alliances) and innovation performance separately. Contrary to the expectations, it did not find a moderation of internal R and D on the relationship between strategic alliances and innovation performance. This was probably caused by the low absorptive capacity of the firms in the European countries studied compared to the most innovative countries in Europe and in the world. Innovation performance did not influence financial performance. This may have been caused by the absence of a time-lag between the measurement of the proxies of these two constructs, which did not to allow to identify an increasing in revenues from new products and services, that takes some time to be perceived. All the results of both models suggested that, if the main goal is an immediate improvement in the innovation performance levels, manufacturing firms should focus on either internal or external R and D. However, if the main goal is the long-term, beginning to strengthen their internal R and D is effective to improve the firms absorptive capacity while achieving a satisfactory innovation outcome. This strategy will allow them to adopt more complex strategies, balancing internal and external R and D, effectively in the future, when the absorptive capacity level becomes high.