The Impact of Network Capital on a Firm's Innovation capability

The development of inter-organizational networks is considered as a strategic resource that can be shaped by managerial action. It can also lead to innovation improvement and can be considered as a method for survival and growth. This paper draws on the notion of network capital, which is defined as an investment in calculative relations through which firms gain access to other organizations’ knowledge to enhance expected economic returns. The main object of this research is to investigate the impact of network capital influence on a firm’s innovation capabilities. For this purpose the network capital with two dimensions of: industrial network capital and scientific network capital is investigated as an independent variable, and innovation capability with two dimensions (product innovation capability and process innovation capability) as a dependent variable additionally inter-organizational learning (knowledge sharing and knowledge acquisition) is entered as an interface in this association. The descriptive correlation method is used in this study and the measurement tool is a questionnaire which is tested between managers and experts from 158 high-tech companies in Tehran with random sampling. The path analysis with PLS software is used to analyse the data of this study. The results show that industrial network capital via inter-organizational learning has influenced the innovation capability. But scientific network capital has no influence on innovation capability.