Abstract
This study aims at mapping the scientific production of absorptive capacity (ACAP) and identifying how these studies analyse the correlation of ACAP with company innovation and with organisational performance. For such, a bibliometric study was carried out, and it used criteria that selected the main articles that have been published on absorptive capacity in two research bases—ISI Web of Science and Scopus—within a temporal cut from the past 5 years (2014–2018). With the help of the HistCiteTM and VOSviewer software, it was possible to select the articles that addressed the correlation of absorptive capacity with company innovation and organisational performance in the incubated companies’ context. By analysing these articles’ findings, it can be concluded that the absorptive capacity is an antecedent of innovation in companies and has a positive correlation with organisational performance. The studies’ tendencies show that the factors which help with the external knowledge intake are social networks, bonds with agents and partner proximity. However, the incubated companies need the incubators’ support to help with these factors, since they are novice companies and do not keep in touch with important partners. They also need to know how to explore and transform external knowledge into internal benefits.
Introduction
For the entrepreneurship theory, company size does not stop its participation and domain in competitive markets. However, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are more dynamic and respond quicker to markets that are constantly changing. Yet, the SMEs’ good performance is directly connected to their innovative capacity and, to Cohen and Levinthal (1989), the innovation activity of a company, no matter its size, depends on its capability to recognise, assimilate and explore external information.
Companies must not trust their own internal capabilities and their bases of knowledge solely. In a world with growing competitiveness and rapid technological changes, it is necessary to benefit from experiences and external knowledge. However, the most innovative companies establish correlations with other economic agents (Caloghirou et al., 2004). In seminal studies, Cohen and Levinthal (1990) used to highlight that the company’s capability to explore new external knowledge, to absorb and apply it is key for the company’s innovation and for the improvement of its performance. According to statements by Caloghirou et al. (2004), companies access and interact with knowledge out of their limits for the creation of new pieces of knowledge, which results in company’s innovation.
This exploration of external knowledge is what Cohen and Levinthal (1989) named Absorption Capacity, or ACAP, which is the company’s capability to acknowledge new pieces of information, acquire them and apply them in order to boost the company’s innovation development (Engelman et al., 2017).
Exploring external knowledge becomes important, especially for new entrepreneurships, but previous knowledge is necessary, which means basic abilities and previous knowledge, with the objective to acknowledge the value of relevant information. Due to this need, novice entrepreneurs need innovative ideas in order to start their SMEs and to search for the support of companies’ incubation programmes. In companies’ incubators, these novice entrepreneurships will have access to experienced professionals and will benefit from the connections the incubators have with other entrepreneurial entities (Rubin et al., 2015).
Incubators can help the incubated companies with the intake and the use of important external knowledge by turning it into innovative entrepreneurships, since they contribute to the country’s economic development. Despite the efforts and citations on the importance of external knowledge for the incubators, do the shortcomings about which the stimulating characteristics are in this process still persist?
To minimise the shortcomings of the characteristics in the intake process and the application of external knowledge in the incubators, some studies state that the networks connected to the incubators benefit the incubated companies in the experience exchange with other companies and in the access to several types of knowledge (Chandra et al., 2014; Eveleens et al., 2017; Rubin et al., 2015), which was reinforced by the study by Grebenkin and Ivanova (2012), that highlighted the incubators’ role in the establishment of innovative entrepreneurships.
According to a research by Binsawad et al. (2019), entrepreneurs and start-ups will reach a higher growth and development in companies’ incubators, since the knowledge shared by the companies’ incubators plays a fundamental role in the start-ups. On the other hand, a study by Cravo and Marques (2019) state that the companies’ incubators allow the incubated companies with conveniences such as an increase in research and development, technology transfer and support to the absorption of the technology that will be transferred, which improve innovation rates in the company.
In order to develop the ACAP of the companies that are starting their activities, the companies’ incubators will face a major challenge in the support they will offer the incubated. This study raises the following research question: through ACAP, can the companies’ incubators influence the incubated ones to reach an organisational performance? To minimise this challenge, it is necessary to analyse studies, which address ACAP and identify how it can impact companies’ innovation and organisational performance. Thus, the gaps about which characteristics should be mobilised in this process will be identified. Knowing these elements will enable the incubators to be able to identify how they will help the incubated companies’ ACAP, with the objective to develop more assertive mechanisms for the financial and relational development of the incubated.
This study’s objective is to map the ACAP’s scientific production and identify how these studies analyse the ACAP correlation with company innovation and with organisational performance. Studies that show which organisational mechanisms promote and improve ACAP and its results are under development (Cordero & Ferreira, 2019), which makes studies with this focus important in order to reach academic advancements on the context of incubators and incubated. Analysing the ACAP correlation with innovation in companies and their performances provides subsidies to understand how to improve innovation in the company and the companies’ organisational performance with ACAP. Upon analysing this correlation, this study intends to contribute to the ACAP’s theory in SMEs.
This study will present the results of the bibliometric survey about ACAP in the past 5 years, as well as the analysis of the objectives and the articles’ findings that highlighted the ACAP correlation with company innovation and with organisational performance. Then, the methodologic procedures will be presented, and the adopted criteria to select the articles from the bases researched will be explained, followed by the results’ presentation and analysis and the studies’ conclusions.
Absorptive Capacity, Company Innovation and Organisational Performance
ACAP is a term that was coined by Cohen and Levinthal in 1989. Since then, several studies have been carried out to investigate the ACAP correlation with company innovation and with organisational performance. According to these authors, the innovations are generated in the companies and come from research and development (R&D) activities, from exploration capacity and knowledge assimilation, which go beyond the company’s limits. To Wang et al. (2018), companies will be more innovative as they acknowledge the value of external information, by assimilating and applying it internally, that is, they generate innovation as they absorb external knowledge (Scuotto et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2018).
Concerning innovation, Jensen et al. (2007) mentioned that there are two cooperation modes of innovation: one based on the production and use of coded scientific knowledge or technology and innovation (STI) mode, and the other based on a learning mode inspired by the experience of doing, using and interacting (DUI). The STI mode focuses on the role of R&D formal processes that produce explicit and codified knowledge. The DUI mode, on the other hand, focuses on the learning that comes from informal interactions within and between organisations. The STI cooperation mode is partnered with universities, research centres and research laboratories, and the DUI partners are clients, suppliers and competitors (Parrilli & Heras, 2016). According to studies by Xie et al. (2010), the collaboration networks that influence their innovations in SMEs are research institutions and universities’ clients and suppliers.
Despite the studies on ACAP that have been carried out, Volberda et al. (2010) stated the need for more studies, which address the ACAP nature, the list of previous knowledge and the interactions with the managerial, intra-organisational and inter-organisational antecedents in order to increase the knowledge about ACAP, even with some studies that point out to results that state ACAP’s importance for the companies’ innovation.
Some of these studies pointed out to ACAP’s effectiveness in companies’ innovation (Engelman et al., 2017; Lau & Lo, 2019; Soo et al., 2017), which confirmed the influence and the innovation impulse and, according to Scuotto et al. (2017), not only improve the company’s innovation but also its competitiveness and agility to overcome competitiveness. A company’s external knowledge exploration capacity can be affected by their collaborators’ absorption capacity and by the types of knowledge they have (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990), which make a good management of learning in companies so important.
In the study by Probst et al. (2009), the authors identified several activities that are essential in the organisations’ learning management process: identification, acquisition, development, sharing and distribution, knowledge use and retention, with acquisition and application of new knowledge as activities that are essential for the companies’ competitiveness (Hutabarat & Pandin, 2014).
These activities were classified as ACAP dimensions by researchers Zahra and George (2002), who, in one study, identified the main dimensions of ACAP and presented four ACAP dimensions of a company: acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploration. Acquisition is the capacity to identify and acquire external knowledge that will be crucial for the organisation. Assimilation refers to analysing, processing, interpreting and understanding the information obtained. Transformation is the company’s capacity to develop and refine their routines in order to combine the existing knowledge with the acquired and assimilated knowledge. Exploration is the company’s capacity to refine, expand and boost their existing competencies or to create new ones.
The acquisition and assimilation capacities are ‘potential’ capacity dimensions (PACAP), and the transformation and exploration capacities are ‘realised’ capacity dimensions (RACAP), and both these capacities, potential and realised, are components of ACAP. Each ACAP dimension’s effect in the organisational performance was analysed by Ali et al. (2016), who concluded that ACAP acquisition, assimilation and exploration positively and significantly influence the organisational innovation and, consequently, increase their performance. Knowledge transformation as an ACAP dimension does not have any influence on organisational innovation, that is, they concluded that three of the four dimensions are the main boosters of organisational innovation and increase the company’s performance. Transformation solely has no meaningful effect.
The research by Engelman et al. (2017) also analysed the ACAP dimensions’ impact on innovation separately. They showed that each dimension has a different impact on innovation, and acquisition and exploration have a more intense impact on innovation, but transformation has a more moderate influence. Studies by Khan et al. (2019) and Limaj and Bermroider (2019) pointed out that both PACAP and RACAP are important for the development of the exploratory innovations explored in companies. According to these studies, RACAP has a deeper impact on the exploratory and explored innovations. According to Limaj and Bermroider (2019), PACAP affects the exploratory innovation.
Upon analysing new knowledge, companies learn, acquire and retain knowledge and abilities that will comprise the technical infrastructure for new technologies and innovation (Caloghirou et al., 2004). However, according to Cohen and Levinthal (1990), in order to explore the external knowledge, previous knowledge is needed, that is, basic abilities and previous knowledge, so as to acknowledge the value of relevant information. External knowledge, however, does not necessarily contribute to a company’s growth. It will only benefit a company when it is associated to the company’s internal resources. The capability to innovate, which comes from the collaboration with different partners, only increases if the company has developed the capability to scan and acquire external knowledge (Najafi-Tavani et al., 2018).
As claimed by Lichtenthaler and Lichtenthaler (2009), there must be an internal and external blend that combines the internal and external processes of knowledge management. In order for the mix of internal knowledge with external knowledge to be efficient, it is important to know the internal competencies and the external knowledge availability. The study by Jiang et al. (2019) enriched literature on innovation performance, with the combination of external and internal knowledge, and stated that this combination is essential in order to reach innovation results and to obtain a competitive advantage.
Several studies about ACAP will have to be carried out in order to minimise the uncertainties that still exist about the topic and due to the need of further development into the theme. For example, the one that was performed by authors Volberda et al. (2010), which states that intra-organisational antecedents, innovativeness and the ACAP have been under-researched in ACAP literature.
The improvement in the understanding of how ACAP can affect the companies’ innovation and the organisational performance will produce studies that will support the ACAP development in companies.
Atkinson and Lind (2018) report that small enterprises are more innovative than large ones, and they offset their lower productivity with more innovation. Kulkarni (2015) reported that one of the advantages of small enterprises is their fast adaptation to environments that are constantly changing. According to World Bank data, four in every five new jobs are created by micro and small enterprises and, in the incubation programmes, these enterprises receive knowledge and/or capital input.
Cohen and Levinthal (1990) emphasise that, in order to explore the external knowledge that will be crucial for innovation in companies, previous knowledge is needed, that is, basic skills and previous expertise with the objective to acknowledge the value of relevant information. According to GEM data (2017), 45.7% of first-time entrepreneurs do not know the market they will serve, that is, they ignore information that is essential to develop their business. With the objective to minimise the uncertainties that a newly established company causes, its entrepreneurs search for the support of companies’ incubation programmes (Gallon et al., 2011).
In order for the companies that take part in the incubation process to be more innovative, companies’ incubators must support their incubated companies to capture and explore relevant external knowledge, for, according to studies by Wang et al. (2018); Scuotto et al. (2017); Lui et al. (2017); and Luo et al. (2017), the absorption and the application of external knowledge are important antecedents for innovation in newly established companies.
Companies’ Incubation
Companies’ incubators support companies that start a new business, and they are seen as entities that promote innovative entrepreneurships by offering services for entrepreneurs to develop innovative ideas and turn these companies into successful ventures (Nair & Blomquist, 2019; Rubin et al., 2015) by helping them overcome possible obstacles (Alpenidze et al., 2019).
Incubators provide the ideal conditions to increase the organisations’ survival of the initial steps and the performance in the long run (Brun, 2019; Lukosiute et al., 2019; Ratinho et al., 2013). However, in order to avoid the death of the organisation, micro and small enterprises seek the support of an incubation programme in companies (Gallon et al., 2011). An important objective of incubators is that of building up strategic partnerships with several institutions with the objective to provide incubated entrepreneurs with access to information and innovation, to qualified professionals and to the development of co-joint projects (Alpenidze et al., 2019).
The assistance that incubators offer increases the survival and the rate of growth of an organisation after the entrepreneurial phase (Lai & Lin, 2015). Based on the assistance that incubators offer their incubated, the study by Rice (2002) noted that the assistance provided to incubated companies includes advice aimed at the companies’ needs to face crises and develop capacities to survive and prosper in the short run. Incubators’ managers contribute to incubated companies with resources and knowledge related to the transactions in the incubated company. Studies by Alpenidze et al. (2019) mentioned steps that the incubators must take towards their incubated according to their needs, like proper facilities and the offer of qualification programmes.
Companies’ incubators have connections with other organisational entities, and they are essential for sharing and exchanging knowledge, experiences and contacts with other companies, but these networks benefit the incubated companies in the acquisition and exploration of opportunities (Alpenidze et al., 2019; Chandra et al., 2014; Rubin et al., 2015).
According to Stubberud (2016), companies that went through the incubation process increased their networks and the absorption capacity and improved their performance. Moreover, studies by Binsawad et al. (2019) concluded that the process of knowledge sharing increased the performance of those incubated, since companies improved the goals of the organisations when they encouraged their associates to share their knowledge.
Method
The term ‘bibliometrics’ was created by Otler in 1934, and it means the use of quantitative methods for the objective evaluation of scientific production (Araújo, 2006). This study will use the bibliometric method since it complies with the objective of this article, which is to map the scientific production in ACAP. In order to appoint the articles in the bibliometric research, the criteria that will be adopted for the selection of articles must be determined. To select the main articles about ACAP in this study, an investigation in the ISI Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus bases was performed in January 2019 by searching for ‘Absorptive Capacity’. This is the term that was coined by Cohen and Levinthal (1990). That is why this term was chosen. The ISI WoS and Scopus are the databases of scientific articles considered as key for the accomplishment of bibliographic revision, since they gather a set of journals from different publishers, and publications from national and international literature (Mongeon & Paul-Hus, 2016). Three steps were taken for the bibliometric analysis, according to what was established in the study by Mesquita et al. (2015): choosing the database and the collection criteria, data collection and data representation and analysis.
The criteria adopted for the selection of articles were the same in the two bases researched, and they were carried out as follows: the past five years (2014–2018), Business, Management and Accounting sub-areas; ‘article’ as type of document selected; the term ‘Absorptive Capacity’ must be included in the title, in the abstract or keywords; select periodicals that published four or more articles about the topic researched; three select authors who published two or more articles; and select articles that had three or more citations.
The option to select authors who published more than two articles follows the Lotka’s Law (1926), which states that a limited number of researchers produce about a certain topic (Machado et al., 2016). Also, the selection of periodicals, which mostly discussed the topic that followed the Bradford’s Law, by which the periodicals that publish more about a certain topic supposedly have a higher and more relevant quality about that topic (Machado et al., 2016). Figure 1, shows the selection criteria in the research bases and the number of articles found.
After applying the criteria, these are the entries found: 75 articles in the ISI WoS, and 68 articles in Scopus, totalling 143 articles. From these, 46 articles appeared in the two bases and their doubles were discarded, which resulted in 97 articles.
Articles Analysed.
The articles from the ISI WoS basis were exported into the HistCiteTM bibliometric analysis software package, whereas the articles from the Scopus basis were exported into the VOSviewer software with the objective to organise and analyse the selected articles.
Description of the Findings in the Databases
Most Published Journals About Absorptive Capacity (2014–2018) in the Web of Science.
By analysing the authors with the highest number of publications on the topic, there is Leal-Rodriguez, who ranks first with five articles. The authors who published three articles were Ali M., Najafi-Tavani Z., Pedersen T., Roldan J. L., Xie X. M. and Zhao X. D.
As for the publications by year, it can be stated that the year 2016 had the highest number of publications about the theme, with 29.3%, according to the criteria adopted for their selection. The following year, 2017, had the lowest number of publications, with 9.3%. The remaining years—2014, 2015 and 2018—published 25.3%, 13.3% and 22.7%, respectively.
From the most cited authors in the references of the articles selected, there are Cohen (1990) and Zahra and George (2002), who had a great percentage of citations in the articles, with 92% and 85.3%, respectively.
The Local Citation Score (LCS) represents the article’s number of citations in the research set, and the Global Citation Score (GCS) represents the article’s number of citations in all the sources from the ISI WoS. The 75 articles selected had 809 citations in the GCS and 28 citations in the LCS. The most cited LCS article was the one by Tavani et al. (2014), with three citations, and the most cited in the GCS were the ones by Leal-Rodríguez et al. (2014) with 42; Enkel and Heil (2014) with 38; Ferreras-Méndez et al. (2015) with 36; and Engelen et al. (2014) with 35 citations.
Most Used Words in the Articles’ Titles from the Global Citation Score.
Most Used Words in the Articles’ Titles from the Local Citation Score.
In the Scopus basis, and by analysing the articles after the criteria use, nine authors were identified. They published three articles during the period selected, which were Alegre J., Ali M., Enkel E., Heil S., Kang J., Leal-Rodriguez A. L., Meissner D., Najafi-Tavani Z. and Pedersen T. The remaining authors published less than three articles.
Periodicals with the Highest Number of Articles about Absorptive Capacity (2014–2018) in the Scopus Basis.
Comparing by year, there is a low number of articles in the year 2017, when only six articles were published. As for the year 2018, the number of publications about the theme was the highest in the past 5 years, with 21 articles. The remaining years—2016, 2015 and 2014—published 15, 13 and 13 articles, respectively.
Words with the Highest Hits.
A total of 6 clusters were identified out of the 19 items that resulted in 60 links or connection hits of these words. Cluster one had the following words: absorptive capacity, innovation, innovation performance, knowledge acquisition and SMEs. Cluster two had knowledge management, leadership, learning, open innovation and technological forecasting. Cluster three had knowledge, PACAP, RACAP and radical innovation. Cluster four had manufacturing, manufacture and structural equation modelling. Cluster five had dynamic capacity and Cluster six had knowledge transfer. The word that most relates to ACAP is innovation.
In relation to the terms’ score, it was identified that the lowest score belongs to articles that were published in 2015, and the highest score belongs to those that were published in 2017. By analysing the words’ correlation with ACAP over time, it is possible to see that, first, it studied ACAP as a manufacture benefit that evolved into an innovation impact, then into PACAP and RACAP, the importance of radical innovation, the consequence of innovation performance and the importance of acquiring new knowledge. It was, later, related to leadership and open innovation, and then to knowledge and knowledge management. Figure 2 shows the correlations’ evolution.
Most Cited Documents.
The most cited article, by Engelen et al. (2014), addresses ACAP as a moderating entrepreneurial guidance in turbulent markets. The second article, by Ferreras-Méndez et al. (2015), addresses the ACAP’s mediating role in the formulation of strategies in order to take the external knowledge and its innovation and performance role. These two articles were cited by most of the articles analysed, showing the importance of understanding the ACAP’s mediating or moderating role.
Most Cited References in the Articles.
Next, the analysis of the articles addressed ACAP and related it to the company’s innovation and organisational performance, identifying the trends or gaps emphasised in these studies.
Discussion
Authors Wang et al. (2018) reported that ACAP is an innovation antecedent in companies. They demonstrated the importance of local and global networks in the assistance to the access of external knowledge. Some studies pointed out global networks as being more important than local networks. However, this study carries the difficulties companies face in the global networks among countries with emerging economies. According to this study, among the difficulties, there are the technological gaps and the cultural differences. Due to this difficulty, the knowledge in the local networks can be more rapidly transformed into innovations in the companies. Another study, which approached the networks, was the one by Scuotto et al. (2017), showing the positive role of social networks in ACAP and in company innovation, acknowledging that social networks are environments that manage knowledge and encourage the development of new ideas. To the authors, however, there is the need to investigate how the virtual environments can perform a focal role in order to improve innovations.
Not only are the networks important for knowledge management, but the interactions among employees are also important, as stated by Liu et al. (2017) who identified that through knowledge acquisition and application, the employees’ informal interactions improved ACAP in companies, thus affecting their innovation, both individually and collectively, which makes the managers consider how they should promote the employees’ collaboration and knowledge sharing in an innovative way.
Studies on the interaction with intermediaries and partners were carried out by Franco et al. (2014), and by Lin et al. (2016). According to Franco et al. (2014), the company’s human capital is not a factor that boosts PACAP but the proximity of partners in the company. The interaction with partners who are close to the company improves PACAP, but it is the cooperation with scientific institutions that increases it. According to the authors, the interactions that increase the company’s human capital are the only ones that positively moderate the companies’ innovation. Companies should make partnerships with scientific institutions in order to increase their human capital and, thus, the companies’ innovation.
A study by Lin et al. (2016) concluded that the company’s bonds with intermediaries can contribute to innovation, by increasing the innovation’s research scope and reducing the costs of searching for external knowledge. ACAP mediates the correlation between intermediaries and the company’s innovation performance. For the researchers, not every company has all the internal resources for innovation, and the creation of bonds with intermediaries is important, since they help the innovative companies to identify new opportunities. However, these bonds are not enough for the acquisition of external knowledge. It is necessary to have a good application of these pieces of knowledge acquired, fostering internal capacities in the companies. It is the managers’ responsibility to think of ways to boost intermediaries to search for company innovation.
Networks’ participation and employees and partners’ interactions enable and expand the search for new knowledge. According to Luo et al. (2017), the search for new knowledge feeds a virtuous cycle for company innovation. Authors Molina-Morales et al. (2016) agree with this statement, which means that both the internal absorption capacity and the external openness are key factors for company innovation. According to these authors, it is necessary to carry out studies, which longitudinally analyse the networks in order to clarify the knowledge correctors’ role dynamics in companies’ innovation.
Besides employees and partners, the competitors are also one of the sources of external knowledge. However, the study by Hurmelinna-Laukkanen and Olander (2014) was not able to find support for the hypothesis about the competitors’ ACAP role in company innovation, for the negative correlation was not statistically meaningful. According to the authors, this can be due to the protection competitors exert over their assets. However, the results show that the competitors’ ACAP appropriation regime plays a notable role in the companies’ innovativeness. More studies that analyse how competitors’ ACAP can affect companies’ innovativeness are necessary.
The study by Gkypali et al. (2018) detected that ACAP not only feeds innovation, but the external knowledge also contributes to the company’s research and development, and improves the company’s exporter performance. As they export, companies expand their networks and engage into new partnerships for their R&D, and that is this study’s main contribution. However, findings by Leal-Rodriguez et al. (2014) stated that cultural barriers weaken knowledge management and decrease the mechanisms that are inherent to ACAP. Therefore, in order for the companies to compete with the success of the knowledge’s intensive sectors, they must implement strategies that reduce cultural barriers.
As for the ACAP dimensions, the perceived (PACAP) and the realised (RACAP), some authors have investigated them separately as well as their impacts on the company’s innovation and on the organisational performance. According to Ali et al. (2016), the ACAP dimensions, the acquisition, assimilation and exploration positively and significantly influence the company’s innovation, but the dimension concerning transformation does not affect the company’s innovation, for transforming external knowledge solely without exploring it will not result in a company’s innovation. According to the authors, up to this moment, there has been no identification about any empiric study that examined which ACAP settings and organisational innovations generate a superior organisational performance.
Another study that examined the ACAP dimensions separately is the one by Xie et al. (2018), who found that there is a positive correlation between the ACAP’s four dimensions and the company’s innovation performance. They identified that transformation and knowledge exploration mediate the acquisition and the assimilation correlation with the companies’ innovation performance. ACAP is a key factor for the companies’ innovation efficacy, which shows that knowledge transformation and exploration are vital for companies to create essential competencies.
On the other hand, authors like Leal-Rodriguez et al. (2014) stated that PACAP (knowledge assimilation and acquisition) does not imply the companies’ innovation, unless it positively influences RACAP (knowledge application and exploration). In order to validate this thought, and as suggested by Ali and Park (2016), PACAP and RACAP must occur in this sequence, and PACAP raises the RACAP level. Only then will they be able to promote company’s innovation. First, the external knowledge must be acquired and assimilated. Then, it must be applied and explored in order to generate company’s innovation. That is why the authors state that PACAP will not result in company’s innovation, since knowledge must be applied to the internal processes.
In the study by Ferreras-Méndez et al. (2015), the authors formulated a theoretical model that showed the valuable knowledge’s assimilation importance from external sources and its application for the generation of innovation in companies, and the increase in organisational performance. According to the authors, the managers must bear in mind that extracting new ideas from external sources solely will not provide improvements in the company’s performance but the ACAP development. The managers must gain a competitive advantage if they develop strategies focused on the synergies between the search for external knowledge and ACAP generation.
By relating ACAP to the company’s performance, Song et al. (2018) stated that this correlation is measured by knowledge acquisition and by innovation generation. To the authors, the basis of knowledge absorbed does not play an immediate role in the production, but the use of this knowledge in value generation activities. It is not only about absorbing external knowledge, but it is also about using it.
The previous experience of a company’s innovation can generate a negative impact on the search for external knowledge, as stated by Kim et al. (2014). According to these authors, PACAP is closely related to the amplitude in the search for external knowledge. Up to a certain level, PACAP can be harmful in this amplitude. High PACAP levels may decrease the efficiency in the taking of decisions according to the limited rationality perspective. Another important finding of this study lies in the statement that the search for several sources of knowledge increases as the company operates in the environment that assures an appropriation of innovation results, which confirms that, depending on the company’s PACAP level, the appropriability regime is one of the main factors that can affect the knowledge’s external searching activities.
Lastly, the article by Engelen et al. (2014) identified that ACAP was used to measure the entrepreneurial orientation and the organisational performance correlation only in turbulent markets, and did not present any benefits to non-turbulent markets. These studies’ findings state that, when ACAP is high or low in markets with low levels of environmental uncertainties, there is no positive correlation between entrepreneurial guidance and organisational performance. ACAP encourages entrepreneurial companies to find and implement high-risk opportunities. However, as a suggestion for future studies, the authors say that the interaction among entrepreneurial guidance, ACAP and market turbulence must be considered in less developed countries, where companies usually have fewer resources.
Therefore, it is possible to observe that elements such as network participation, partner interaction, external knowledge absorption and application are important for the incubated companies to hit their innovations. However, due to being novice enterprises, they face difficulties for not keeping in touch and not relating to networks and important partners, for not understanding which knowledge is important for their enterprises and where to search for it and apply it strategically into their enterprise.
Conclusions
By analysing the articles’ findings that related ACAP to company’s innovation and to organisational performance, it must be highlighted that ACAP is a company innovation antecedent and has a positive correlation with organisational performance. Companies will perform better if they acquire external knowledge and apply it internally in order to generate innovation. Studies show a meaningful positive correlation between ACAP and organisational performance.
The guiding contribution of the analysed studies was that capturing external knowledge is not enough if it is not internally applied to result in innovation. Incubated companies will improve their R&D through partnerships with science and researchers (Lin & Chang, 2015) and they will improve their knowledge foundations by activating external resources (Yoo et al., 2016). The articles analysed showed that ACAP in incubated companies must be developed with the help of the companies’ incubators.
Therefore, the relevant factors considered by this analysis were:
social networks; bonds with intermediaries; and proximity with partners.
With these findings, it was possible to make up questions about the ACAP correlation in incubating and incubated environments. These questions enable the establishment of a guiding axis to further analyses.
Do companies’ incubators support their incubated companies in the capture and application of their external knowledge by searching for improvements in their products and services? What is the role of companies’ incubators against the need to search for new knowledge in the incubated companies that will be relevant for their development? What are the tools used by companies’ incubators in the capture and application of external knowledge with the objective to refine the development of products and services of incubated companies? How important are social networks for the benefit of the incubated? What is the role of companies’ incubators in these social networks that aim at benefitting their incubated? What is the systematic process of partners’ identification that will be strategic for their incubated?
This study contributes to point out incubated companies. Most of them are entrepreneurs of MSEs, which try to implement innovation, and capturing external knowledge is not enough if it is not internally applied in its processes. Companies’ incubators have a network of correlations and partners that can help incubated companies to access the relevant external knowledge. They can also help to obtain external knowledge and internally apply this knowledge into the incubated companies. Incubated companies will be more successful as they transform external knowledge and apply it to their R&D projects and which, by inexperience, may not know how to explore and transform knowledge into internal benefits. These are important aspects that sustain the incubator–incubated requirement. Thus, identifying the mechanisms of these relationships enables the knowledge of the practices of these connections in a way it is possible to lead to results that are assertive and not deliberately accomplished in this context.
As for this study’s limitations, they are coupled with the timeline researched as well as with the databases used. In this context, studies in other databases are suggested, besides a new bibliometric research with the use of different software, like SYSMAP (Vaz & Uriona Maldonado, 2017). As a suggestion for future studies, the articles recommend studies that aim at deepening ACAP investigation and how to improve the positive impact on innovation and on the incubated companies’ performance. Moreover, it aims at checking the incubators’ role in training and applying the external knowledge that is essential to improving the performance of the incubated.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This study was financed, in part, by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brasil (CAPES)—Finance Code 001.
