Resumo

Innovation is important for driving economic progress and competitiveness— both for developed and developing economies. The innovation process is an open phenomenon and no longer restricted to the internal organizational environment. Several national aspects as culture for instance may influence the motivation and openness to innovate on the national level. However, the access to innovation is also an important factor along the national culture to permit innovation openness to happen and to better the innovation process.

Specifically, the following research tries to answer the following question: Do national cultural values influence the likelihood that entrepreneurial firms will pursue innovation openness? The objective is to verify whether the relationship between national culture and innovation openness is mediated by the access to innovation. It is believed in this study that the national culture has its importance for innovation openness, however the national culture cannot create an effective environment conducive to innovation openness only by itself lacking the access to innovations.

The theoretical background that composed this paper was studies about innovation openness and its two preceding factors: national culture and access to innovation. For this purpose, it is measured how the national culture for innovation influence the interest for innovation, with access to innovation as a mediator variable of this relation. Hypothesis 1: The national culture is positively related to innovation openness. Hypothesis 2a: The national culture is positively related to the access to innovation. Hypothesis 2b: The access to innovation is positively related to innovation openness.

The approach adopted in the article presents quantitative character, through the use of secondary data survey collection method. The database comes from The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM 2013). Three constructs were used from this database: National Culture (independent variable), Access to innovation (mediator variable), Innovation Openness (dependent variable). To test the hypotheses of the study, it was used the data analysis technique of structural equations modeling (SEM) estimated using Smart PLS software version 3.2.4 (Ringle, Wende, & Becker, 2015).

All hypotheses were supported. The findings are in accordance with authors showing that both the national culture and the access to innovation represent external aspects, so the second is relevant for enhancing the effect on openness to innovation from a national culture that favors creativity, entrepreneurship and development based on innovation. Only national culture has a limited effect on the configuration of innovation openness, so if there is no access to knowledge and new technologies through alliances and partnerships, innovation openness gets restricted to some organizations.

Findings from this study have two contributions. The first one was the advanced analysis of the determinants for innovation openness. The second contribution reveals the importance of two prior aspects for innovation openness: national culture and access to innovation. If the national culture is innovative, companies tend to adhere to this type of culture and consequently become more susceptible to innovation openness. The role of access to innovation evidenced by partnerships has a greater meaning on the innovation openness.

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