Intellectual Capital and Innovation Performance: Empirical Evidence in the Turkish Automotive Supplier

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of intellectual capital of Turkish automotive supplier industry upon their innovation performance. This study showed that three types of intellectual capital –employee capital, structural capital, and customer capital– had a significantly positive relationship with innovation performance. Moreover, the results also indicated that the higher the growth rate of an industry, the stronger were the positive relationships between three types of intellectual capital and innovation performance. Besides, customer capital was the greatest among these three types of intellectual capital in Turkish automotive supplier industry, employee capital was the next, and structural capital was the least. This shows two points; first, Turkish automotive supplier industry emphasized the interactive “relations” with their suppliers, clients, and partners; second, it was imperative for Turkish manufacturing enterprises to develop their structural capital to increase their innovation performance.