Finding the reasons that make firms successful in a competitive environment are among the most common motivations in the business research agenda. Capabilities and dynamic capabilities are often the terms used in the literature to describe respectively what firms can do and how they seek and implement change and innovation to create and sustain competitive advantage. In this sense, it is relevant to understand how firms develop their capabilities and what are the different ways they can search for change and innovation. On the other hand, both terms capability and innovation show ambiguities in the literature. This work observes that concept of capability is closely related to the term ‗routine‘ which is one of the central concepts of the evolutionary theory of economic change. Innovation is generally treated under the perspective of technological changes in products and process, but the concept involves other perspectives. Through multiple case studies in two firms, the present dissertation aims at verifying the relations among routines, capabilities and innovation in the vitiviniculture industry in Rio Grande do Sul. In order to do that, it was necessary to build an analytical framework integrating the Schumpeterian theory of innovation as well as Nelson and Winter‘s evolutionary theory of economic change. It was traced back a brief historical evolution of the wine sector to understand its development and how competition occurs in the present. The two specific cases represent two different approaches to competition and search for change and innovation observed in the wine industry. On the one side a large and very market oriented firm, and on the other, a small very niche oriented winery. This work identify and analyzed the production, marketing and research and development capabilities through a routine-based view of the firm as well as the types of change and innovation implemented by the two firms throughout their trajectory. The results show that, although wine is one of the world‘s oldest types of beverages with tradition playing an important role in the way it is elaborated and consumed, dynamic capabilities promoting change and innovation in both cases were necessary in order to obtain distinction in the market.

Author: Alves, André Cherubini

Advisor: Padula, Antonio Domingos

Level: Master’s Degree

Published Study: http://hdl.handle.net/10183/25196