Treble innovation firms: Antecedents, outcomes, and enhancing factors

Abstract

Drawing on the interplay between strategic ambidexterity, resource-based view, and digital servitization, we conceptualize how the rise of digitalization and service business models in industrial settings have materialized in a distinctive category of innovation-oriented manufacturing firms, labeled as treble innovation firms. We propose that said firms are characterized by simultaneously developing the three types of technological innovation —process, product, and digital service. We use a random and representative survey of 423 Spanish manufacturing firms to analyze antecedents, outcomes, and enhancers of digital service innovation adoption in firms that already possess process and product innovations (i.e., dual innovation firms). We report several findings. First, treble innovation firms epitomize the new norm (rather than the exception), representing 21.7% of all manufacturing firms. Second, product leadership and open innovation breadth increase the probability that dual innovation firms implement digital service innovation. Third, treble innovation firms achieve considerably greater profit margins than dual innovation firms. Finally, treble innovation firms can enhance said profit advantage by adopting resource retrenchment and value migration practices.