Abstract
The inherent unpredictability of the innovation process has led to a growing interest in examining the relevance of non-predictive approaches for innovation management. The purpose of this paper is to determine the interrelationships between effectual actions, absorptive capacity and innovation performance. We use data from 2 107 Australian firms, emanating from a 2010/11 dataset, based on the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) methodology to test these interrelationships. Based on our conceptual framework we test these relationships in two models, one with new to the industry (novel) innovations and the other with new to the firm (non-novel) innovation as dependent variables. Our tentative findings indicate that effectual actions and absorptive capacity seemed to be more important for non-novel than novel innovation performance. These counterintuitive findings require further analysis and present opportunities for future research.