Nexus between strategic thinking, competitive intelligence and innovation capability: Managerial support as a moderator

In a rapidly changing milieus, great support for innovation by top management team allows firms to sustain high market competitiveness both in the present and in the future. In actualizing this pursuit, strategic thinking and competitive intelligence are seen as drivers for innovation capability. This study investigates the nature of relationships between competitive intelligence, strategic thinking, and innovation capability. It also explores the moderating role of managerial support on these associations. In this study, a sample of 327 top and middle-level managers’ responses to a survey was obtained from Nigerian Information Technology firms, using a judgmental sampling technique. The data were analyzed with Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), using the SmartPLS software. The findings revealed that competitive intelligence and strategic thinking have an imperative direct and positive impact on innovation capability, and managerial support impacted positively, by meaningfully strengthening the relationships within the Nigeria context. The study mades significant contributions to the literature in terms of model development, which depicts the joint influence of competitive intelligence and strategic thinking with a moderating effect of managerial support. If deficient, this may result in inefficiency in achieving innovation capability among IT firms.