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Background: Competition in today’s markets has made organizations focus greatly on innovative workers and managers to meet up with dynamic market demands, which forms the bedrock of human capital theory as discussed by Crăciun (2015). As part of human capital theory, managers’ skills are the subject of this thesis in relation to innovation. Objectives: To analyze the impact of hard and soft skills on manager’s innovativeness, thereby addressing a real problem facing organizations. This research therefore investigates how hard and soft skills of low-level managers’ impact their innovativeness by drawing inspiration from previous studies. The population for this study is limited to managers in engineering consultancy firms. Methodology: Quantitative analysis is used for this research. Based on the research purpose and question, this study is explanatory. This study approaches theory development in a deductive way, such that hypotheses are proposed first and then data are collected to test the hypotheses. The model contains 3 constructs: Hard skills (HS), soft skills (SS) and managers’ innovativeness (MI). Each of these constructs contain variables that are operationalized in the questionnaire. Cronbach’s alpha and Exploratory Factor Analysis is used to check the reliability of each factor and validity of the constructs. Results: Six models are analyzed with IBM SPSS Statistics 26. Quantitative tools such as Multiple regression and Spearman Rank Order Correlation was used for the analysis. The results show that there is significant and positive relationship between managers’ hard and soft skills and their innovativeness. Conclusions: The empirical analysis shows that managers’ hard and soft skills are positively and significantly related to their innovativeness. This confirms the proposed hypothesis H1, H2 and H4 to be true. The result also shows that soft skills are more positively related to managers’ innovativeness than hard skills. The result of this thesis show that the more hard and soft skills managers have, the more innovative they will be. One of the implications of this study is that firms should ensure that their managers possess both hard and soft skills competencies. Recommendations for future research: Further research on this subject should ensure that larger number of responses are collected. The inability to develop a model to test for hypothesis H3 was a challenge due to the existence of multicollinearity when forming the interaction variable between hard and soft skills. This will be an interesting area for further research. In addition, using other quantitative tools other than multiple linear regression may give more significant result.

The gap between the relatively static marketing resources of a firm and the turbulent marketplace is growing in importance for both practitioners and academics alike. This paper explores how marketing capabilities, specifically market orientation, work synergistically with other organizational capabilities to form dynamic marketing capabilities that enhance firm innovativeness. Findings indicate that a tight integration between the technical and marketing functions of a firm creates a fertile transformation point, where market orientation infuses the innovation process. Market orientation interacts with these integrated capabilities to form a dynamic marketing capability that enhances the organization's innovativeness. Implications include how these dynamic marketing capabilities differ between service and manufacturing firms, where only the cultural aspects of market orientation enhance performance in service firms.

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The emergence of online entrepreneurship platforms made it possible for entrepreneurs to fund their innovative ideas through financial support from business angels, venture capitalists, and crowds. Nevertheless, technology product development projects are the most difficult to fund on such platforms, with the least funding success and highest unsuccessful dollar value among all categories. One major factor affecting funding success on these platforms is the extent of perceived innovativeness of the presented technology products. The extant literature evinces that product innovativeness perception is influenced not only by novelty but also meaningfulness perception and that innovativeness brings higher funding success when novel projects are also perceived to be meaningful. By drawing on the theory of resonance, this study investigates the impact of interactivity on the extent of perceived innovativeness by creating an impact on resonance, which is proposed to represent all pre-identified aspects of meaningfulness. An online experiment was conducted to empirically validate the proposed research model, and increased interactivity was found to be positively associated with perceived product innovativeness through higher resonance. Theoretically, this study proposes the resonance concept to account for the meaningfulness perception regarding innovative product ideas and demonstrates the positive effect of increased interactivity on perceived innovativeness. For practitioners, the results provide evidence for the positive impact of interactive product presentation on the increased perception of resonance and, thus, innovativeness, which evinces a higher potential for funding success in highly innovative product development projects. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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No / Purpose: Using arguments from the regulatory focus and upper echelons theories, this paper aims to examine the impact of a chief executive officer’s (CEO’s) regulatory foci (i.e. promotion and prevention focus) on small- and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs’) level of innovativeness and how these relationships are jointly moderated by intense competition. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical analysis draws on survey data gathered from 257 SMEs in Ghana. Findings: The study findings indicate that a CEO’s level of promotion focus positively affects the firm’s engagement in innovation, while a CEO’s prevention focus is negatively associated with the firm’s innovativeness. The positive association between a CEO’s promotion focus and a firm’s innovativeness is enhanced under conditions of intense competition. Additionally, the negative relationship between prevention focus and firm-level innovativeness is attenuated under intense competition. Research limitations/implications: This study relied on a single informant and also used subjective measures for the dependent variable. As such, individual respondents might have biased perspectives on firm-level product innovativeness. Future studies may use multiple informants to examine the causal links of the variables. Practical implications: The study’s findings provide managers with a deeper understanding of how to achieve superior firm-level product innovation. The understanding of this issue can promote the development and maintenance of further entrepreneurial ventures in emerging economies. Originality/value: The paper has a strong theoretical value as it pioneers research on the effect of CEOs’ regulatory foci on firm-level innovativeness in competitive environments.

The methods currently used in innovation marketing research are focused on the late phases of the innovation process and are usually methodologically complex. This limits their practical impact. The presented thesis aims to create a simple self-report scale applicable in the initial and late phases of innovation process, highly modular and suitable for wide range of research. The main battery of questions was inspired by adopter categorization by Rogers. The questions determine both (1) general characteristics of innovation adopters and (2) their relationship to a specific innovation. The scale was tested during a robust longitudinal online research, thematically focused on users of modern technologies. Representative sample of 4,000 Internet users in the Czech Republic took part in the survey from April 2013 to January 2015. The result is a new self-report scale measuring consumer innovativeness applicable for prototyping, strategic decisions and effective communication of innovations to consumers.

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2016-05-02T17:39:59Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Márcia Roberta Lessa Bartz_.pdf: 1854297 bytes, checksum: 8b9fc939590fc7d228e7de895324a77a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-05-02T17:39:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Márcia Roberta Lessa Bartz_.pdf: 1854297 bytes, checksum: 8b9fc939590fc7d228e7de895324a77a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-11-23 / Nenhuma / Partindo do pressuposto de que vivemos em meio a mercados nos quais exigem cada vez mais que se conheça melhor os consumidores, o presente estudo tem como objetivo principal desta pesquisa analisar a influência do etnocentrismo gaúcho no processo de percepção do consumer innovativeness. A pesquisa tem apenas uma abordagem quantitativa com viés descritivo e inferencial. A coleta de dados quantitativa aconteceu em universidades gaúchas, de duas formas. A primeira foi através de uma pesquisa denominada “estudo piloto” entre 100 alunos, onde se questionou quais as 5 marcas mais lembradas do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, com o resultado pegou-se as 2 mais citadas, sendo elas: Polar e Fruki. Estas foram as marcas utilizadas em todo o estudo como base nos questionários. A segunda forma deu-se através de um questionário estruturado com 400 alunos. A amostra do presente estudo totalizou 500 respondentes. Os dados foram purificados e analisados através de técnicas e ferramentas. Na sua maioria, foram processados com o auxílio do Software Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Por fim, mostrou-se quais as influências do etnocentrismo (baixo “versus” alto) no processo de percepção do consumer innovativeness. Pode-se dizer que as médias encontradas nestes dois construtos apontam que as pessoas com baixo etnocentrismo têm médias menores em Domínio Específico da Inovação e Comportamento Inovador do que as que têm alto etnocentrismo, o que não aconteceu no construto da Criatividade Original. Conclui-se que devido o Domínio Especifico da Inovação e o Comportamento Inovador estarem mais ligados ao meio externo e as influências existentes nele o etnocentrismo se torna alto, o que não ocorre com a Criatividade Original que está relacionada a parte inata do indivíduo. / From the assumption that we are in touch with markets that increasingly demand a better knowledge about the consumers, this research primarily aims to analyze the influence of gaucho ethnocentrism in the process of perception of consumer innovativeness. This research has a quantitative approach with a descriptive and inferential view. The quantitative data collection took place in universities in Rio Grande do Sul, by means of two instruments. The first one, denominated “pilot study”, consisted of a survey with 100 students, asking them about what are the five most recognized trends in Rio Grande do Sul: the results of this survey showed that the two most mentioned trends were Polar and Fruki; thus, they were used as the questionnaires basis in the whole study. The second instrument was a structured questionnaire, carried out with 400 students. The study sample totalized 500 responding individuals. The data were purified and analyzed by means of techniques and tools. Most of the data were processed with the aid of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Software (SPSS). Finally, the influences of ethnocentrism (low versus high) in the process of perception of consumer innovativeness were revealed. It is possible to asseverate that the averages found in those two constructs indicate that people with low ethnocentrism have lower averages in Specific Domain of Innovation and Innovative Behavior than those ones who have high ethnocentrism, what did not occur in the construct of Original Creativity. Then, the conclusion of this study is that the ethnocentrism becomes high due to the fact that Specific Domain of Innovation and Innovative Behavior are most linked to the external environment and to the influences existent on it, what does not occur with Original Creativity, which is related to the individual’s innate element.