Innovation and marketing: keys for competitiveness in family firms

Innovation is a strategic element of competitiveness; however, levels of innovation in Spain do not show the internalization of this premise in business practice. This paper discusses innovation in family firms with the intention to identify both barriers and facilitators, and factor analysis is applied to measure the weight of each component. The main finding is that the most common innovation in this type of business structure is related to marketing, which reflects the need to seek synergy and collaboration between the two as a means of organizational development. Finally, the article lists the components that determine the levels of innovation to further develop a proposal with practical implications for strategic decisions within family firms.