How family affects dynamic innovation capabilities in a design-intensive industry

Abstract

Family firms (FFs) represent approximately two thirds of all firms with huge impact on global economy. Subsequently, innovation is also considered to be the key to competitive advantage, and long-term survival. Thus, research on innovation in FFs has been rising. However, there is a gap in the literature to understand how FFs' capabilities are shaped by a constantly changing environment and how they survive in it. Since design-intensive industries reveal dynamic innovation capabilities (DICs) in emerging markets that are mostly underrepresented in the literature, they form the research context of this study. The outcomes of this paper are expected to reveal the heterogeneity of FFs' capabilities as well as the strategies of FFs. Secondly, the findings would reveal the roles of design contributing to these capabilities in FFs, which highlight the interaction between design and innovation practices of manufacturing FFs in an emerging market.