INNOVATION AMONG SEAPORT OPERATORS: A QCA APPROACH FOR DETERMINING SUCCESS CONDITIONS

摘要

The poor innovative strength displayed by the transport sector in the broad sense often contrasts strongly with that evidenced in other sectors. At the same time, it can be observed that quite a lot of innovative concepts in transportation have been studied in detail. This paper assesses which chain impacts an innovation entails, what conditions will conduce actors to innovate, or prevent them from doing so, and finally also what governments can do to stimulate innovation. The present paper makes an application to innovation by seaport-related operators through a number of cases. For collecting the standardized information, use is made of existing documents as well as sector and project contacts on the cases at hand, on which a scientific review is performed. In order to draw meaningful conclusions from the set of cases, the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) technique is used. The analysis shows that no unique recipe for innovation success exists, but that four sub-groups of cases can be discerned which have common characteristics that consistently lead to innovation success, dealing respectively with the terminal operators, the shipping lines, infrastructure and the innovation champion. The findings are particularly relevant for those in business and in policy-making who are involved in implementing or promoting innovation.