Moh. Solehatul Mustofa, Kemal Budi Mulyono, Nurul Fatimah
Literature on agribusiness innovation in the Global South still examines product, process, marketing, and organizational innovations as isolated domains, thereby overlooking how their complementarities shape agribusiness performance within resource-constrained and institutionally fragmented socio-technical environments. Addressing this gap, this study advances Configurational Innovation Synergy as a theoretical extension of Innovation Configuration Theory by integrating Dynamic Capabilities to explain how firms orchestrate multi-domain innovations to generate complementarities that enhance performance. Using stratified survey data from 866 Indonesian agribusiness firms across input, production, and marketing sectors, this research models innovation configuration as a higher-order multidimensional construct through PLS-SEM and empirically tests the simultaneous role of explorative–exploitative alignment. The results demonstrate that integrative innovation configurations significantly improve agribusiness performance, with stronger effects when firms balance exploratory and exploitative activities. Theoretically, this study contributes a context-sensitive configurational lens for understanding innovation under Global South constraints; methodologically, it demonstrates the suitability of PLS-SEM for modeling complex higher-order innovation structures; and empirically, it offers large-scale, cross-sector evidence that supports collaborative and frugal innovation practices as pathways for strengthening agribusiness competitiveness in emerging economies. © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Faculty of Social Science and Politics, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Semarang, Indonesia; Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Semarang, Indonesia
