Managing innovation: A conceptual framework for evaluating innovation capabilities of manufacturing firms in Turkey

In recent years, building and sustaining innovation become among the top priorities and concerns of leaders of wide range business sizes and industries. Business organizations must constantly look for innovative strategies to improve their competitiveness and stay ahead in the modern global marketplace. However, most of the business organizations still see innovation concept as mysterious, unpredictable, and unmanageable, despite the fact that innovation can be supported, stimulated, and sustained. After all, each business has its unique characteristics; there is no ?one best way? to manage innovation. The purpose of this study is to compile generic aspects of the current innovation management literature in firm-level. Based on this literature review, a conceptual framework, which shows the determinants and indicators of innovation performance of firms, is developed. Various internal and external variables which may affect the innovative activity and innovation capability of a firm are captured in this framework. An explanatory analysis of the proposed framework was performed for the Turkish manufacturing industry to figure out the distinctive variables that affect the innovation performance of Turkish manufacturing firms. For this analysis multilinear regression was employed. Keywords: Innovation; Innovation management; Turkish manufacturing sector, Innovation performance; Multi-linear regression