More than money: strategic and operational innovation capabilities to promote technological innovation through crowdfunding

Abstract Crowdfunding delivers far more than financial capital when ventures possess the right innovation capabilities. Drawing on the dynamic-capability view, transaction-cost economics, and knowledge-based view, we theorize that strategic (dynamic scanning, seizing, and reconfiguring) and operational (digitalization, investment, and networking) capabilities jointly propel firms’ technological innovation and that this propulsion is channeled through digital-platform trust and crowdfunding. Primary data from 164 technology-oriented start-ups and SMEs were analyzed via partial least-squares structural equation modeling. The results confirm that digitalization, networking, and dynamic capabilities each exert positive direct effects on technological innovation; however, their total impact is significantly amplified when digital trust first converts capabilities into successful crowdfunding campaigns, which in turn finance and legitimize experimentation and learning. Investment capability, in contrast, exhibits no independent effect once strategic and operational capabilities are taken into account, underscoring that money alone is insufficient. The model explains 43% of the variance in digital trust and 69% in technological innovation. The study advances theory by specifying a two-stage capability-trust-crowdfunding pathway that links financial-innovation scholarship with innovation-management research and by demonstrating the complementary roles of strategic sensing-seizing-reconfiguring routines and operational digital and network assets under Industry 4.0 conditions. Practically, the findings advise entrepreneurs to build credible digital-trust architectures and partner networks before they seek crowdfunded capital and guide platform providers and policymakers in designing trust-enhancing mechanisms that translate funding into sustained innovative output in the form of technological learning and its upgrading.