Innovation clusters and determinants of innovativeness in manufacturing industries

Innovation is an important source of competitiveness and is studied extensively by both the academicians and the practitioners particularly in the last decades. This study is based on the results of an exploratory study conducted in the Northern Marmara region of Turkey covering 184 manufacturing firms. A model is developed to determine the determinants of innovativeness and data is gathered through a questionnaire to validate this model. The resulting determinants of innovativeness are intellectual capital, organizational structure, organizational culture, manufacturing strategy, barriers to innovation, and collaborations. As a result of cluster analysis employing the same dataset, four innovation clusters are obtained using five innovation types: Radical product innovation, incremental product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation, and organizational innovation. These clusters are labeled as the Leading innovators, Followers, Inventors, and Laggers. In this study, we test the hypothesis that different innovation clusters put different emphasis on different determinants of innovativeness as well as on different components of these determinants. The hypotheses are all supported except for organizational culture and collaborations. These results together with those associated with the components of the determinants are commented upon.