Obstacles to Innovation – Is There a Need for Consensus?

The innovative performance of a firm is limited by a number of factors which hamper the development and implementation of innovation. These obstacles to innovation decrease or even prevent a firm's propensity to innovate, and do impact business performance. Over the last twenty years, a multitude of innovation studies have emerged attempting to identify the various obstacles to innovation and to measure their relative importance. These studies collect and analyze the literature as well as reports, data and opinions of the actors involved, to find the factors that impede innovation. More than ten systematic reviews and meta-studies of the relevant literature in recent years reveal that, while a broadly accepted classification has emerged, there is no discernible consensus on the relative importance of the various obstacles. In this paper, a systematic review of these systematic reviews and meta-studies is performed to identify themes and variations in importance. The analysis reveals that the importance of the obstacles to innovation may vary across discriminants such as firm size, type of industry, private or public ownership and economic framework of operation. The paper advances the thesis that there may be no need for consensus as innovation is a complex and interactive process between a firm and the context in which the firm operates.