Does innovation (really) matter for success? The case of an IT Consulting Firm

The paper discusses to what extent innovation is a crucial variable in explaining the success of NOVABASE, a Portuguese IT consultancy firm. In order to proceed with this discussion, the evolution of NOVABASE is described, emphasizing the most important steps in the firm’s trajectory, which are shown to result from the joint influences of upstream technological change, downstream market opportunities, and the firm’s strategic options. Then, the paper reviews some contributions stemming form studies of innovation in services, building on these to form the framework of analysis used in the empirical research. The main results of the empirical work are then presented, leading to the discussion of the possible answers to the question in title.