Developing innovation capability measures for the services sector: an exploratory study

Innovation Capability (IC) describes the ability of a firm to develop new products, services, processes and systems. There are few published studies of IC and these have been undertaken in the manufacturing sector and have focused on product innovation. This exploratory research is the first stage of a larger study to investigate IC in the services sector with the Australian hotel sector as the case study. In-depth interviews were carried out with 18 hotel owner-managers in South Australia. Analysis of the accounts of innovation activities supported the hypothesis that the dimensions of IC developed in the manufacturing sector appear to apply to the hotel sector.