Corporate and individual competences: how do they match the innovation process?

This work starts from the observation that, in the literature, there are few links between the strategic dimension of competences and that of human resource management. Indeed, on one hand the strategic vision of the core competences of the firm prevails and, on the other, the evaluation of such competences within the management of human resources is dominant. In this paper, the connection is sought in the innovative process of the firms and in the context of the resource-based theory of the firm. Three levels of analysis are highlighted: strategy, organisation and management of human resources. Then, in relation to the innovation process, three models of organisational capabilities for the management of competences are proposed competence maintaining capabilities, combinative capabilities and competence building capabilities. Three cases of firms operating in different competitive contexts are then analysed. Each has a different innovation pattern, from which the three models described have been drawn.