(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004-04-12)
Hegde, Deepak
This thesis investigates the relevance of currently used firm-level innovation concepts in a developing country context. I draw on the results of a comprehensive survey of manufacturing and service firms instrumented to assess the knowledge- capabilities of the economic sectors in Malaysia. The thesis presents a discussion of the extant literature on firm-level innovation and tests hypotheses regarding the impact of firms organizational structure, strategies, resources and environment as determinants of product, process and organizational innovations. These are examined from the classifying framework provided by Keith Pavitts model of technology trajectories to better understand the nature of innovation and its production determinants. I find that Malaysian firms -- across all sectors -- show a greater propensity to make process and organizational innovations as against product innovations. Soft factors like training, knowledge management practices and collaboration with market actors are used as significant inputs in their innovation process.