Innovation performance in service companies and KIBS vis-à-vis manufacturing: the relevance of absorptive capacity and openness

The present paper adds to the most recent current of literature that highlights the importance of innovation in services, analyzing a setting -- Portugal -- which is relatively backward in terms of innovation performance. Based on a sample of 4,128 companies (including 1,489 service companies) that answered the Community Innovation Survey 2008, the authors assessed, by resorting to logistic regressions, the determinants of innovation performance in Portuguese companies. The study demonstrates the influence of companies' openness and the relative importance attributed to different sources of information for innovation on innovation outcomes of service companies (and Knowledge Intensive Business Services) compared to manufacturing industries.