Investigating the effect of customer knowledge management on innovation capacity considering the mediation of knowledge absorptive capacity

Today, innovation capacity is one of the most important and debatable research topics in the automotive industry. this research was aimed to investigate the relationship between customer knowledge management and innovation capacity considering the mediating role of knowledge absorptive capacity.

Customer knowledge management is a dynamic process to improve customer information including three different knowledge flows as following: knowledge of, knowledge about, and knowledge for customers. innovation capacity is a continuous improvement of the organization's general capabilities and resources to discover and exploit opportunities for developing new products in order to meet market needs and expectations. absorptive capacity is defined as the organization’s ability to absorbing and utilizing new knowledge in the way of value creation, the various dimensions of which include acquisition, combination, transformation, and exploitation of knowledge.

This research is an applied study in terms of purpose and it is a descriptive-survey study in regard to the method. the statistical population encompasses the managers and employees of saipa automotive research and innovation center located in tehran. 196 people were sampled by convenience method. the instrument for data gathering was a questionnaire made up of pre-made measures the content validity of which was established by considering the experts’ opinions. in addition, its reliability confirmed after calculating cronbach's alphas. research hypotheses were examined by conducting structural equation modeling in lisrel v.8.8 software.

The research results, at the confidence level of 0.95, indicated that customer knowledge management has a positive and significant effect on innovation capacity directly and indirectly through knowledge absorptive capacity. by identifying and simulating customer ideas and information in line with creating and exploiting extra-organizational knowledge, managers can improve the absorptive capacity and pave the way for innovation capacity.

For managers of the automotive industry to achieve success, the knowledge and customer should be kept both in mind. customers should be considered as one of the most important sources of knowledge for improving the continuous innovation capacity.