Objective:

To analyze the influence of innovation capacity on the business resilience of restaurants in the Toluca Valley, State of Mexico, in the face of the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Methodology:

Quantitative study of non-experimental design and explanatory scope. A survey was applied to 216 workers in 75 restaurants and the partial least squares structural equation modeling technique (PLS-SEM) was used to test the research hypothesis.

Results:

The Covid-19 pandemic encouraged the restaurant industry to strengthen itself by exploiting and exploring knowledge and skills. Innovativeness was found to exert a positive and high influence on resilience, exhibiting strong predictive power and relevance. In addition, the ability to cope with adversities is linked to the transmission, transformation, and exploitation of existing knowledge in firms.

LimitationBs:

This study included a sample constituted by a small number of restaurant workers and data have only been obtained from that perspective, making the appreciation of other actors lacking. The findings should be consulted with discretion as they are part of a context where business tourism predominates.

Conclusions:

In terms of innovation, the approach of exploitation and exploration allowed understanding how organizational adaptation processes are generated in the face of strong changes in the environment; while the dimensions of resilience: anticipation, coping and adaptation, as successive stages grant a holistic view of the process that companies undergo to overcome crises.