Purchasing contribution to innovation exploration: awareness, motivations and capabilities

Purpose This paper explores the precedents for purchasing to contribute effectively to innovation exploration. We investigate how purchasing can become aware of innovation opportunities, their incentives or motivations to explore and capture innovation and the required capabilities. Design/methodology/approach Aiming for theory elaboration, we analyse an exemplar case study of a company developing leading-edge practices for involving purchasing in innovation exploration applying an Awareness-Motivation-Capability (AMC) framework. Findings This study elaborates on purchasing theory with a comprehensive set of AMC-based precedents for purchasing’s innovation exploration contribution that we categorise into three dimensions: motivations, capabilities and awareness. Our findings indicate interrelations between these and purchasing motivation as a precedent of capabilities and awareness. Research limitations/implications We demonstrate the useful of applying AMC theory to researching purchasing’s contribution to innovation and how AMC needs to be adapted in this research context. We explore interrelations between awareness, motivation and capabilities but propose future research on the nature of these interrelations. Practical implications We suggest ways for managers to shape, adapt or redesign their purchasing organisations to better support innovation exploration. Originality/value This study proposes a framework for purchasing contribution to innovation based on AMC theory.