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The biotechnology sector provides business‐to‐business service and continuous innovation is an imperative for biotechnology organisations in order to survive. The aim of this paper is to outline the elements in Estonian biotechnology organisations that inhibit them from becoming more innovative, and based on that, suggest how managers can increase their organisational innovativeness (OI).

The study is based on single‐respondent structured interviews that were carried out in 15 biotechnology organisations in Estonia. The questions were divided into five categories: strategic orientation to innovation, processes related to resource allocation, processes related to work organisation, behaviour related to innovation initiation and behaviour related to innovation implementation. For each category OI the score was calculated and analysed.

The study hypothesised that OI is about half of its potential and the lowest scores were expected to emerge in the resource allocation to innovation and processes related to work organisation categories. The authors found that OI was higher than expected among the study sample and the only resource allocation score was significantly lower than the scores of other categories. Surprisingly, the score of strategic orientation to innovation was the next lowest after resource allocation.

The results imply that Estonian biotechnology organisations could increase their innovativeness by better integrating innovation into their formal strategy and rewarding employees for innovative ideas. Also, specific aspects in other categories are elevated (rotating employees across functions/regions, introducing development discussions, etc.) that would enhance OI.

The originality of the paper lies in its profound overview of recent literature on OI, and the development of an interview questionnaire that covers a range of relevant issues assumed to support innovation.