Performance and innovation insights: Empirical evidence from Portuguese and Spanish listed companies

Knowledge creation inside companies stems from the systematic and dynamic combination of individuals and activities towards the best fit of innovation and performance. It results from the merger of knowledge creation activities and organizational capabilities which determine the firm’s potential for innovation and potential returns. Those organizational skills embody the corporate knowledge assets, which include intellectual property and other intangible assets, recognized in the company’s balance sheet or immediately expensed. In this dynamic process, marketable innovations are usually generated by human capital, strongly tacit knowledge based, and converted into legally protected intellectual resources. Thus, those resources translate the firm’s innovative side and act as business drivers towards its current performance and future sustainability. Fostering the innovation processes inside the organization or within the entire network in which the company is integrated, it is the structure of sustainability and commitment with stakeholders’ expectations. The value chains of innovation are responsible for ensuring the quality of products and processes, time based to markets and catalysts of reliable invested capital returns. In a purely logic of sustained value creation, innovation activities and decisions should emerge as key insights to business performance and sustainable return. Based on the companies integrating the stock exchange indexes PSI (Portugal) or IBEX (Spain), and through a regression estimation model, this paper aims to evidence whether and to what extent explanatory variables have a significant impact in the overall performance. We found a suggestive lag time between intangibles capitalization and its impact on turnover. It can suggest that returns deriving from intangibles are deferred according the IAS 38 scope and framework. This can also be a warning signal towards the identification of intangibles’ useful lives and their potential impairment recognition.