Pages: 34-41
Introduction. The current economic environment is increasingly turbulent and companies are developing skills through human resources, technologies and Research & Development to cope with declining product cycles and faster technological changes. In evolutionary theory, innovations are heterogeneous and firms learn dynamically from interacting with other firms and technologies, from which incremental or radical innovations can emerge. After a new technology appears, the embedded part of the technology will be disseminated within the industry through some channels and the non-embedded part of the technology will accumulate some idiosyncratic knowledge within the innovative companies through the appropriation of knowledge and knowledge spillovers. There are two major trends in studies, some do not study the innovation per se but are oriented towards the transformations regarding the innovative strategies of the companies in different economic and social environments. The other trend of studies is oriented towards the innovation process itself which has evolved from a linear process of R&D-patent-innovation-market to one towards open-innovation in which the company interacts with other entities.
Aim of the study. The aim of this paper is to present some approaches to study innovative activities from the company’s perspective with a focus on resource-based view and evolutionary theory. In the resource-based approach, companies develop competitive advantages through resources and innovations that are rare and difficult to imitate.
Keywords: innovation activities, resource-based view, evolutionary theory, competitive advantage, technological changes.
JEL Classification: D21, L25, O33
