According to Flynn, Doodley & Cormican (2003), innovation is an intentional introduction and application within organizations of new ideas, processes or procedures that are primarily designed and adopted to benefit significantly to organizations or society. in general. Innovation can occur in products, processes, market, design, or services (Otero-Neira, Lindman, & Fernandez, 2009). Human resource management refers to all policies, practices and systems capable of influencing employee behavior, attitudes and performance (De Cieri, et al. 2008). Some of the firm-specific factors that influence innovation are organizational design, management style, and human resource management and strategy. According to Vrakking (1990), among these factors, human resource management practices are considered the key element of successful innovation because the human factor is involved in the entire innovation process. First, human resource planning involves the analysis of personnel demand and the selection of qualified people in order to achieve organizational objectives. To improve innovation, human resource planning recruits the right people with high creativity and establishes venture teams that effectively develop and introduce new products. The role of human resource management from an innovation perspective includes training. Ding & Akhtar (2001) argue that training is important in developing employee skills and knowledge necessary for innovation, as it has been established that there is a positive relationship between training provided to employees and innovation. Training should be designed to expose individuals to new and different experiences that make it easier to challenge existing ways of working while reward systems should act as facilitators of...... middle of paper .... ..companies in three cities in the PRC country. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 12(6),946-964. Kang, S., Morris, S., and Snell, S. (2007). Relational archetypes, organizational learning and value creation: extension of human resources architecture. Academy of Management Review, 32 (1), 236-256. Laursen, K. and Foss, N.J. (2003). New human resources management practices, complementarities and impact on innovation performance. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 27, 243-263. Minbaeva, D. (2005), HRM Practices and MNC Knowledge Transfer, Personnel Review, 34(1), 125-144Otero-Neira, C., MT Lindman and M. Fernández. (2009). Innovation and performance in SME furniture industries: an international comparative case study. Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 27(2), 216-232 Vrakking, WJ (1990). The innovative organization. Long-term planning, 23(2), 94-102