Does family ownership affect innovation activity? A focus on the biotechnological industry

All rights reserved. This paper investigates if family ownership affects the firm’s innovation activity. It characterizes familiar and innovative firms using the Resource-based View of the firm and the relevant factors to innovate and gain competitive advantages. In particular, the purpose is identifying the profile of innovative firms and analyzing if family ownership is a characteristic related to their innovative activity. To achieve this objective, we have applied a cluster analysis methodology in a sample of companies of the Spanish biotechnological industry in which innovation is core. The results show the relevance of the family characteristics on the characterization of those innovative firms, contributing to clarify the existing inconclusive literature between family and innovation, and helping stakeholders and policy-makers to make decisions about inversion or transference of knowledge which would help to improve competitiveness and promote socio-economic changes.