Development of a guiding conceptual framework for the empirical analysis

Basically, this chapter serves as a bridge between the theory and the following empirical analysis. The first step reexamines the research questions of this thesis, clarifying how they have been developed during the previous theoreti-cal discussion, on the one hand, and how they will be addressed by the em-pirical analysis, on the other hand. It integrates the theoretical considerations of evolutionary and resource-based theory about the heterogeneous innova-tion patterns of non-R&D-performing firms into a conceptual framework for empirical analysis. Based on this theoretical framework, the key concepts will be defined and some important implications for the design and methodology choice of the empirical analysis will be derived. This chapter closes by erecting some guiding theses for the explorative empirical analysis. However, the func-tion of these theses should not be confused with the role of hypotheses in the context of testing causal relationships. Instead, they should serve as a kind of verification instrument to assure that the later results are in line with the theoretical framework and that they are not arbitrarily detached from the previous theoretical suggestions.