Metrics for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Success: A Study on Firm Performance in the South Florida Region

The geography of innovation is built upon an agglomeration of economies and “innovation hearths”, (Crevosier, 2004). Innovative success of a firm is often indicated by their creativity, access to alliances, and usage of access to local resources. Few metrics have been able to give adequate rise to a definition for Innovation as a means of measuring entrepreneurial and innovative success in combination. This paper utilizes a combined measurement scale of entrepreneurial and innovative success to define the location determinants for innovative and entrepreneurial success in today’s business environment. Principal Components Analysis drawing on the attributes contained in Linder (2006) and Mankin’s (2007) work on innovative success is revisited to construct a stronger index of innovative success along with identifying key dimensions associated with innovative firms. The Factor Analysis demonstrates that components of innovative culture, effort, productivity, management, and success are required as a combination to achieve high sustainability of innovative success. A Factor Analysis for proximity to resources and amenities is also utilized in the research to identify components associated with the importance of access to capital and financial resources. Multivariate modeling using a Discriminant Analysis suggest the combination of local resources and alliances dimensions that contribute to strong overall performance for defining determinants for high performing firms (Entrepreneurially and Innovative Successful Firms).