Title: Examining the relationships between information acquisition, Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition, and innovation performance through the development and validation of a new measure to assess information acquisition in the high technology sector in Taiwan

Authors: Yu-Lin Wang, Andrea D. Ellinger

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan City, 701, Taiwan. ' Department of Human Resource Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 351 Education Building, 1310 South 6th Street, Champaign, IL 61820, USA

Abstract: The purpose of this research was to develop and validate a new measure of information acquisition (IA) and investigate the relationships between IA, Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition (EOR), and innovation performance in the high technology sector in Taiwan. This study drew upon Dixon|s (1992) conception of IA as a construct of organisational learning to develop a new measure of IA. Dixon|s theoretical framework was mostly empirically supported, and the IA measure appeared to be reliable. The results suggest that both IA and EOR positively contribute to individual-level and firm-level innovation performance. IA and EOR were also significantly positively correlated.

Keywords: information acquisition; acquisition measurement; organisational learning; EOR; entrepreneurial opportunities; opportunity recognition; entrepreneurship; innovation performance; SMEs; small and medium-sized enterprises; high technology; high-tech firms; Taiwan.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEIM.2009.025146

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, 2009 Vol.9 No.3, pp.313 - 342

Published online: 14 May 2009 *

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