Objectives of and Barriers to Innovation: How Do They Influence the Decision to Innovate?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The innovation potential of the companies is a major issue nowadays, therefore, the topic is interesting. The main outcomes of the study are worth for publishing, but the paper needs improvement in some parts. The main problems are:
Methodology
- The paper is based on a questionnaire, but in the methodology there is no information about the questions (type, number, topics).
- The separation of the innovative and non-innovative companies and the exploratory factor analysis is not clear in the methodology.
- The use of the Likert scale questions, the difference test (independent samples t-test) and statistics related to the factor analysis are mentioned in the results, but all these should be placed in the methodology.
- The independent samples t-test is only for normally distributed samples. Due to the 1-10 Likert scale data, the medians should be compared by Mann-Whitney test.
- Lines 68-80 belong to the Materials and Methods, rather than to the introduction.
- Lines 166-190 is a literature review, not the authors' methodology
References
Despite the increasing role of innovation nowadays, relatively few recent publications (from the last 5 years) are cited.
Specific remarks/questions
L296 194 companies responded from 734 of total -> 26.4%, not 29.9%
Table 1.
- What are the values in the column % population? It is not the percent of the comanies compared to the total population.
- In L198 authors mention Agri-food Industry, Beverages and Tobacco activity categories, but the table shows different categories - these should be synchronised. I suppose that a company can carry out several activities. How did you categorised these companies?
Table 2.
- "Willingness to innovate and take innovation risks" - this was one question? Please clarify it.
- "Más de" is Spanish instead of English
General remarks
- In English the decimal separator should be point, while comma for thousends - this is mixed in the text
- Linechart is relevant only for continuous data series - please use a bar (or pie) chart for category data
Author Response
We are sincerely grateful for the constructive comments and suggestions for our paper. We hope you will find that the changes we have made improve the manuscript on the important aspects that have been suggested.
The changes made are commented on in the attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
The reviewed research paper applies multiple research methods (factorial analysis, OLS, probit models) on a quite large sample (194) of agri-business type firms from Spain, in order to investigate and determine the particularities of: (i) how the objectives and barriers to innovation influence a firms’ willingness to innovate and its competitiveness; (ii) how innovation objectives/strategies influence the underpinned type of innovation; (iii) how barriers to innovation influence the demand for various public actions. As stated above, the research avenue is interesting in the field of social sciences, especially in the current problematic situation of the food industry, although some improvements regarding the paper are proposed to be considered and addressed.
C1: Within the abstract, it would be indicated to explain a bit more exactly, clear and in detail the results. A phrase such “The results show the influence of the objectives and barriers on the variables 11 analysed (willingness to innovate and competitiveness; types of innovation, and demand for gov- 12 ernment actions)” (lines 11-13) could induce the reader in error and make the impression that all the independent variables influence all the dependent ones. However, the result tables (8-10), prove otherwise.
C2: Regrading the Background section, an extension of the theoretical framework would help to explain how objectives and barriers influence the willingness to innovate, competitiveness, the type of innovation carried out, request for several public actions.
C3: Considering the methodological part of the paper, the authors presented several aspects. However, none is presented regarding:
- The source of items/scales within the ad-hoc questionnaire
- There is twice 3.1. used: for ”3.1. Research design and data collection” and ”3.1. Methodology”. The second one should be renumbered and perhaps entitled otherwise, considering that it describes the applied statistical techniques.
- “The mean of the marginal effects of each observation is shown” (line 600), why and how is that calculated (maybe a reference would be valuable).
C4: The paper has an overall good readability, however, minor aspects should be amended. In several parts of the Results section, authors use in tables and explanations/observations/legends under them interchangeably either or both “Sign.” or “Sig” for significance shortening (table 9 and 10). As well, in parts 4.3., 4.4., 4.5, authors use both lower (in tables) and upper (in text) indexes for objectives and barriers (e.g. FObj1 and FObj1). For part 4.4., there is no interpretation for FObj2 in the body of the paper. In order to assure consistency, on page 20, demand 5 and 6 should be in parenthesis and explanations before them.
C5: Considering the current state and characteristics of the research, it would be necessary to include within the last part of the paper, the correlation or discrepancies between the results of the paper and other extant research in the field. Also, an extension of the limitations of the research and how would authors consider to address them in the future, as potential research directions, would be beneficial.
C6: It would be nice if the authors could review and rewrite some phrases like “data were obtained that provided to analyse additional aspects to those contemplated in official reports and statistics” (lines 71-72); “and are more exporters in relation to non-innovative Agri-food companies” (lines 325-326), authors should consider to write rather that those companies exports more or are active exporters; “In this sense, the univariate probit model methodology is preferable to estimating a bivariate probit model for each type of innovation.” (last row within the footnote on page 17); and “[28,38,40-41,45-47]. are barriers” (line 125), where the dot should be a comma. In the above mentioned cases, in my opinion, it would be necessary to rephrase or correct punctuation.
I hope the above observations will contribute to the improvement of your paper.
Best regards and good luck with the research paper!
The Reviewer
Author Response
We are sincerely grateful for the constructive comments and suggestions for our paper. We hope you will find that the changes we have made improve the manuscript on the important aspects that have been suggested.
The changes made are commented on in the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The topic of the paper is interesting and up-to-date. The paper is well written and readable.
The paper itself has some flaws worth improving:
- Describe the links between the research gap and the goal of the paper and research question.
- The theoretical background should be longer – about 2 page.
- Write why the paper is important. What is the main contribution of the paper to the field?
- Add the discussion section to the paper with more interlinks to literature analysis. Describe the links between research and theory and other similar researches. The discussion should be about 1-2 pages and the conclusion should be in the separate paragraph.
Author Response
We are sincerely grateful for the constructive comments and suggestions for our paper. We hope you will find that the changes we have made improve the manuscript on the important aspects that have been suggested.
The changes made are commented on in the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Authors accepted most of the suggestions and answered the questions, so the paper has improved in great extent. However, I still have to mention some shortcomings:
- There is an overlap between the Introduction and the Background, because both chapters also describe - in slightly different ways - what the research is about. Lines 195-206 have not appropriate place in the Background.
- Line 243 "last 2/3 years" - it would be 2-3 years or it means 8 month?
- In Table 2. at the first category "a" is Spanish instead of English; I suggest <=500,000 for the lowest category, and 10,000,000< for the highest
- Table 3. and 4. Mann-Whitney test compares the medians of the samples, therefore the tables should show medians rather than means.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Authors have implemented my comments.
Author Response
Thank you very much for the very enriching comments of the last revision that have contributed to improve the current manuscript.
Minor changes have been incorporated in the manuscript considering the suggestions of another reviewer. The grammar has been revised as well as the spelling.
