External communication determinants of innovation in the context of a newly industrialised country: a comparison of objective and perceptual results from Greece

This paper analyses the 'importance' and 'awareness' of a set of established 'external communication' determinants of technological innovation in the context of a newly industrialised country. The researcher interviewed 105 Greek manufacturing companies, measuring their innovation rate as well as 23 potential 'external communication' determinants. Using correlation and regression analyses, the initial group of 23 factors was reduced to a subset of 10 'major importance' determinants of innovation. The results supported two hypotheses related with newly industrialised countries, namely: 1. searching for product-specific information is more important for innovation than scanning more general market and technological information; and 2. the co-operation with partnering organisations is more important for innovation than the co-operation with assisting organisations. The 'objective' results were then compared with the 'perceptions' of the manage:rs on the important factors determining innovation (also measured during the interviews). Overall, the perceptual analysis confirmed the significance of the subset of statistically important variables. Therefore, the hypothesis that in newly industrialised countries the managers are generally unaware of the important determinants of innovation was rejected. Generally, the study provided supporting evidence to the 'contingency' school of thought, suggesting that there are no universally applicable recipes for successful innovation management. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.