What is the role of culture in the innovation dynamic of small firms within the context of their territorial environments? How do shared values, beliefs and practices underpin the knowledge production process that leads to innovation? In what way do symbolic aspects of social life shape European SMEs’ innovation processes? This volume gives an extensive insight into the complex links between culture and innovation in one of the key agents of economic life: SMEs and micro firms. The chapters employ different analytical and methodological strategies in regions of Europe to identify dimensions of culture, especially values, norms, skills and institutions, and to scrutinize which specific components of culture are relevant to firm innovation and to the more general dynamics of regional innovation. The original research presented shows how small firms learn, interact, compete and collaborate with other key agents of the innovation system. Taken as a whole, the volume points the way towards a more comprehensive framework for understanding the nature of innovation in SMEs and micro firms. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.

Utilizing a unique data set, Zoltan Acs and David Audretsch provide a rich empirical analysis of the increased importance of small firms in generating technological innovations and their growing contribution to the U.S. economy. They identify the contributions made by both small and large firms to the innovative process and the manner in which market structure, and the firm-size distribution in particular, responds to technological change. The authors' analysis relies on traditional theories of industrial organization and tests existing hypotheses, many of them previously untested due to data constraints. Innovation and Small Firms brings together two large data bases recently released by the U. S. Small Business Administration - one directly measuring innovative activity for large and small firms, the other providing a detailed census of economic activity for all manufacturing firms and plants across a broad spectrum of industries. Acs and Audretsch describe and evaluate the data bases in the context of the literature on innovation, market structure, and firm size. They present their findings on the presence of small firms, small-firm entry in manufacturing, small-firm growth and flexible technology, and mobility and firm size. They compare static and dynamic measures of small-firm viability and address the relationships between R&D, innovation, and productivity, and analyze the interaction between technological regimes and the role of government in innovation.

The concept of open innovation (OI) has become a very popular topic during the last decade, with increasing number of SMEs embracing OI practices to gain competitive advantage. This edited volume is a timely opportunity to gather research on OI in SMEs, to investigate how OI is managed and implemented to determine the peculiarities compared to OI management in large companies, and to specify the consequences for future OI research.The book offers insights into the following topics: The state of the art on open innovation in SMEs; adopting open innovation in SMEs; interorganizational networks and innovation ecosystems; sectoral patterns of open innovation in SMEs; and measuring, evaluating and stimulating open innovation in SMEs.

The concept of open innovation (OI) has become a very popular topic during the last decade, with an increasing number of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) embracing OI practices to gain competitive advantage. With the majority of publications focusing on large firms, open innovation in SMEs has received scant attention from both scholars and practitioners. This book seeks to correct this imbalance by providing an in-depth study for both business managers and graduate-level students. Using rich, in-depth case studies from successful companies, it examines different approaches to managing OI in order to develop practical guidelines for implementation. It also highlights important differences between OI strategies in SMEs and large companies. Its findings will be of use to those studying or working in innovation management, open innovation, small business management and entrepreneurship.

Since the pioneering work scholars such as Joseph Schumpeter and Peter Drucker, the fields of innovation and entrepreneurship have evolved to become two separate and distinct disciplines. Schumpeter 1 focused on the contributions of entrepreneurial startups and smaller firms, whereas Schumpeter 2 emphasized the role of formal research, development and industrial innovation in larger firms. Unfortunately, the study and practice of each field has suffered as a result: entrepreneurship has become preoccupied with individual entrepreneurs and small business creation, and innovation is dominated by corporate R&D and new product development.Promoting Innovation in New Ventures and Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) aims to bridge these two fields by examining innovation in new ventures and SMEs. This book identifies themes which can reunite the study and practice of entrepreneurship and innovation by examining a potentially bridging phenomenon. The focus here is on high growth, innovative SMEs, and the interactions between SMEs and larger organizations, private and public. It is organized around three overlapping themes: SME innovation performance, practices and networks.

Analyzes the role of small- to medium-sized manufacturing firms in innovation and the economy, arguing for active government assistance. Small- to medium-sized firms (SMEs), defined as firms with less than 500 employees, play a crucial role in the economy, though this analysis supports Schumpeter's (1939) argument that the role of SMEs varies from industry to industry, and within an industry as it develops. Multiple general and technology policy reasons are given for support of SMEs, including that SMEs lead to a more favorable balance of economic power, mutually beneficial small/large firm relations, and a significant source of employment. Additionally, research supporting a model developed by Abernathy and Utterbach (1975) shows that in certain industry sectors, small firms contribute to a disproportionately high percentage of radical innovations. Similarly, calculations of the National Science Foundation's industrial R&D statistics (1976) show that small firms have performed better in terms of innovation measured against dollar expenditure than have large firms. The importance and effectiveness of entrepreneurship in small firms is discussed, as well as strategies for large firms to adopt small-firm entrepreneurial methods. After analyzing the differing economic roles of SMEs in the United Kingdom, Japan, and the United States, it is determined that SMEs play the most vital role in the United States where they are seen as the cornerstone of a free market economy -- though differences from sector to sector are to be accounted for. Thus, SMEs merit government support, which they have been receiving in many forms, including entrepreneurial education, tax concessions, technical and information services, a network of industrial research organizations, etc. Concludes that SMEs are essential to the innovative progress of the economy, especially playing highly significant roles at the early, fluid stages of development in new technological industries. (CJC).

This book explores how government policy can boost innovation by improving the environment for entrepreneurship and small firm development and increasing the innovative capacities of enterprises.