Unraveling the links between dimensions of innovation and organizational performance

Economists typically define innovation as a process or practice that is new to an industry; hence they emphasize a firm's speed of innovation relative to other firms in the industry. Organizational theorists, on the other hand, usually focus on the number of products or processes that are new to the firm; hence, they emphasize innovation magnitude. This study builds a bridge between these two approaches by exploring the link between two dimensions of innovation - speed and magnitude - and two measures of a firm's performance - objective financial reports and executive ratings of perceived effectiveness. We propose that each dimension of innovation will be associated with a different measure of firm performance. Using data from the commercial banking industry, we find interesting results that partially support our predictions based on the theory that different dimensions are indeed linked to different measures of performance. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.