The Role of Emotional Intelligence on Innovation: the Case of the Italian Luxury Footwear District

Despite the acknowledged positive effect of human capital on firm innovativeness, there have been few attempts to investigate which emotional intelligence competencies promote innovative outcomes. In human intensive industrial clusters specialized in traditional products, firm innovativeness depends mainly on tacit individual competencies possessed by some key roles. Our research aims to identify the emotional intelligence competencies that distinguish outstanding performers who operate as key roles in one of these clusters. The field work is carried out in the industrial district of Riviera del Brenta, localized in the Northeast region of Italy and specialized in high-fashion woman footwear production. These companies represent the excellence of luxury shoe manufacturing worldwide with global brands such as Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Dior, Yves Saint Laurent and Givenchy, and with products characterized by high technical and stylistic standards of quality. For each of the 21 selected companies, assessed according to their financial and innovative performance, three key professional roles have been identified due to their impact on the innovation process: the style manager, the production manager and the sales manager. An inter-firm emotional intelligence modeling process was carried out on 63 role-holders. The study used Behavioural Event Interviews (BEI) to collect critical episodes in which interviewees felt effective in implementing product, process and organizational innovations. An original thematic analysis allowed to enrich the traditional code-books with new competences and their indicators for innovation-related behaviors. Statistical tests were used to compare the sub-groups of performers. The contribution of this study is twofold: firstly, it suggests a set of specific indicators to analyze those behaviors related to innovative outcomes and, secondly, it highlights the role of self-management and relationship-management EI competencies in the attainment of higher innovative performance