An investigation of dynamic capabilities impacting medical equipment innovation performance

 In today’s high-velocity dynamic environment, product innovation has turned to be a critical element contributing to increased performance and sustained competitive advantage. Despite the vital importance of this issue, empirical studies on product innovation, particularly dynamic capabilities impacting innovation outcomes, are limited. Besides, there are several studies in the extant literature that call for quantitative or qualitative research investigating specific dynamic capabilities that increase innovation performance outcomes. Thus, grounded on dynamic capabilities theory, the present research is aimed at investigating organizational dynamic capabilities that enhance product innovation performance, providing empirical evidence for critical roles of dynamic capabilities in improving product innovation performance outcomes.  

The current study has adopted a qualitative approach to achieve the research objectives while the literature on dynamic capabilities is obsessed with quantitative studies. Specifically, this study has employed semi-structured interviews with 36 managers of Iranian medical equipment manufacturers in order to gather primary data. Also, this research has utilized applied thematic analysis in order to analyse the data. Specifically, the interviews with managers were transcribed and MAXQDA 18.0 was employed to perform thematic coding in three levels, resulting in 600 coded segments.    

  The results show that dynamic capabilities play essential roles in improving medical equipment companies’ innovation performance. Specifically, this study reveals that there are 18 sensing, seizing, and reconfiguration capabilities that bring about enhanced product innovation performance, thus empowering the companies to respond to innovation opportunities effectively. Concerning the sensing capabilities, the results indicate that medical equipment companies should constantly gather customers and other key decision-makers’ information and conduct various market researches to be aware of market changes. Besides, they should be proactive regarding their intelligence generation practices and adopt an open mind-set to identify opportunities. In respect of seizing capabilities, results indicates that marketing, quality management and branding capabilities are essential to respond to innovation opportunities and the companies should also have high levels of managerial and research and development capabilities. Regardingreconfiguration capabilities, it reveals that the companies should employ their research and development capabilities to upgrade and integrate their resources and routines. Additionally, they should utilize their digital technologies to continuously reconfigure their resources and increase their flexibility seeing that firms with higher levels of agile reconfiguration capabilities benefit from enhanced innovation performance outcomes.  

From a theoretical point of veiw, this study notably contributes to the dynamic capabilities theory seeing as it identifies specific dynamic capabilities that augment innovation performance. Arguably, the research on dynamic capabilities is in early stages and prior studies in the literature have consistently called for empirical quantitative or qualitative research examining dynamic capabilities that improve firms’ innovation performance. From a managerial perspective, the current study sheds light on a set of dynamic capabilities that brings firms increased innovation outcomes; thus, the resultant findings empower these companies, particularly medical equipment manufacturers, to effectively develop organizational sensing, seizing, and reconfiguration capabilities and, in turn, respond to innovation opportunities successfully.