Empirical study of the relationship between intellectual capital and open innovation within companies in agribusiness

Abstract

This article aims to examine the relationship between intellectual capital and open innovation. It is a question of studying the immaterial components which can have an influence on the practices of open innovation. The objective is to want to both understand the open innovation practices of agri-food companies and examine and describe the impact of each of the components of intellectual capital on these practices.

The treatment of our problem required a sequential approach through a first exploratory qualitative study materialized by the administration of a semi-directive interview guide with managers and managers of agri-food companies and a second confirmatory quantitative study through a questionnaire, administered to 45 agri-food companies. Exploratory and confirmatory statistical factor analyzes were established to test our research hypotheses, so we used Structural Equation Models in this approach. The confirmatory factor analysis was therefore carried out using the SMART PLS version 3 software which adapts perfectly to the reflexive nature of the latent variables of our research model and the type of modeling through the structural equations.

Our results reveal the crucial role of relational capital in the adoption of open innovation. Indeed, relational capital has a positive and significant influence on the three open innovation practices studied, namely: openness to external sources of information and knowledge, R&D collaborations and other incoming activities. We also note the informal and intuitive nature of innovation under the aegis of the open innovation paradigm and the non-formalization of research and development collaborations carried out jointly with external partners.

Keywords: Intellectual capital, Relational capital, Open innovation, R&D collaboration.

JEL Classification: O31, O34

Type of Paper: Empirical article.