Innovativeness and Firm Performance: Evidence from Nigeria

This paper investigates the relationship between innovativeness and firm performance in Nigerian. In doing so, we drew a sample of one hundred and thirteen (113) quoted firms that have consistently published their audited annual financial reports between 2012 and 2017. This necessitated the adoption of unbalanced panel data analysis to ascertain the possible firm’s specific innovation factors (Labour-technology capital intensity, administrative and marketing, research and development (R&D), and innovative intangible asset rights) that are key in explaining the performance of quoted firms. The empirical evidence shows that labour -technology intensity and innovative intangible assets indicate positive and significant impact on profitability per employee, while administrative and marketing innovation and research and development both show negative but significant and insignificant impact on profitability per employee respectively. It is most surprising that research and development which form the greater part of innovation on the part of employees fail to conform with the apriori expectation, meaning it is has not really enhanced the performance of the employees enough to boost the firm performance. In the light of our findings, we recommend that new corporate innovation strategy be encouraged in Nigeria. More so, further applied and scientific research that has the tendency to engender employee productivity should be engaged.

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Innovativeness and Firm Performance: Evidence from Nigeria

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