Does Innovation Drive Sustainable Competitive Advantages?

This paper examines the critical role of innovations as a driver for sustainable competitive advantages. A quadruple model of global strategy is introduced. The model is based on the introduction of an innovation-based perspective of strategy. This is in addition to the other three but well-known perspectives of global strategy (industry-based, resource-based, and institution-based views). Thus, the four perspectives of strategy could lead a complete set of factors that need to be analyzed for the formulation of global strategy. The model could assist organizations in sustaining their competitive advantages. It is proposed that the introduction of the innovation-based view represents the fourth perspective of a strategy quadruple, thus overcoming a long-standing criticism, namely, the global strategy may lack adequate attention to innovation in developing a firms global competitive strategies. This paper presents a set of four hypotheses. When tested, these hypotheses could result in a better understanding of the link between the innovation and the global strategy domain. Furthermore, the quadruple model could be useful in understanding the relationship between innovativeness and business performance. It is anticipated that this paper could assist researchers, business management, and analysts in developing global innovation strategies