How Intellectual Capital Influences Innovation in Belgian Luxury Houses

Since almost three decades, luxury houses have been tackling the increasing importance of groups and of private investment funds specialized in the luxury sector (Roux & Floch, 1996).
Therefore innovation has become an important source of value creation and of competitive advantage for them (Chevallier & Mazzalovo, 2008; Kapferer & Bastien, 2009).
Reciprocally, luxury houses usually demonstrate a strong intellectual capital according to the definitions of Bontis (1998).
Although the impact of intellectual capital on innovation has been widely demonstrated by scholars in a general scope (Subramaniam & Youndt, 2005), the existence and the nature of this influence has not been investigated in the luxury sector yet.
The aim of our research is to highlight if a causal relationship exists in Belgian luxury houses, in order to validate or invalidate the results obtained by Subramaniam & Youndt (2005) and by Wu, Chang, & Chen (2008) within the luxury sector.