Innovation orientation and performance of Kuwaiti family businesses: evidence from the initial period of COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose This paper analyses the impact of innovation orientation on the family business performance in Kuwait Further, the aim of this paper is to understand the innovation culture among Kuwaiti family businesses and the innovation orientation concept and its importance for these businesses Design/methodology/approach The study will use a quantitative research methodology in order to investigate the relationship between independent variables: creativity, risk-taking, future orientation, openness to change and proactiveness with Kuwaiti business performance as a dependent variable A well-structured questionnaire is distributed to 150 family businesses that operate in Kuwait, where 114 of the respondents responded positively Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was used for evaluating the proposed model Findings The results show that creativity, risk-taking and future orientation have significant relationship with business performance, while openness to change and proactiveness do not have any significant relationship with business performance Research limitations/implications This research is conducted during the period of initial months of COVID-19 pandemic, March-July 2020 respectively, and responses might be influenced by the current situation Originality/value The correlation between family businesses and innovation orientation is not studied so far in Kuwait There is a lack of studies about family business in general in Kuwait since there are only very few research studies This is the first research about this topic that covers Kuwait as a country