How Does Education Influence Individual Innovation Performance? A New Theoretical Framework with a Mediation Model

Although the economics of education and individual innovation are analyzed in literature separately, the mechanism of how education influences individual innovation performance is still poorly understood. Many individuals join value engineering projects (VEPs) to improve production which is a representative type of innovation. By applying multilevel modeling to analyze 2,078 employees in 3,976 VEPs over 6.5 years, we build and test a theoretical framework to explain how education improves individual innovation performance. Education firstly improves employees’ performance in activeness, creativity and teamwork which act as the mediators and then contribute to enhance individual innovation performance, measured by comprehensive indicators: 1) the total number of VEPs which the employee proposed as an applicant, 2) the total number of VEPs which the employee joined as either an applicant or a follower, and 3) the total number of patent applications from the VEPs which the employee joined. The mediation effect is significant in the two models whose dependent variables are the first and second indicators respectively. Education influences the patent applications directly and positively. To our knowledge, this study may be the first one to discover the mechanism with mediation effect which has important implications for both academic research and management practice