8th International EMI Entrepreneurship & Social Sciences Congress, Aksaray, Turkey, 17 - 19 November 2022, pp.213-214
Adapting to market and technological turbulence is essential for survival in a developing enterprise. Firms may need to increase their innovation performance to keep up with these changes and gain a competitive advantage. The upper echelon theory explains the influence of entrepreneurs/top executives on organizational results. In this context, it is considered that the entrepreneur's courage is effective in innovation performance, which the enterprise needs to survive. The study investigates the effect of market and technological changes, which are part of environmental changes, on innovation performance in nascent enterprises and moderating role of courage in this effect. The study was carried out on innovative companies operating in free trade zones. The authors collected data from 324 free zone companies using the convenience sampling method via HR department managers. The relationships between variables were examined by correlation and regression analysis. The results showed that market and technological changes were significantly and positively related to innovative performance, and the entrepreneur's courage moderated this relationship. It can be stated that entrepreneurs with high courage responded to changes with more innovation than those with low courage.
Keywords: Technological change, innovative performance, entrepreneurial courage