Authors: Firouze Pourmand Hilmersson; Mikael Hilmersson
In fast changing business environments innovations and innovative behaviour is argued to be a key to success for SMEs. The ability to develop products and processes at a high speed are assumed to facilitate the growth of the firm. Research on the temporal aspect of innovation processes to this point, has mainly focused on the innovation of individual products or processes. In this study, we advance the concept of rate of innovation, which captures innovative behaviour over time. By drawing on resource accumulation theory, we hypothesize that the rate of innovation of the firm decreases if the time elapsed between foundation of the firm and its first innovation is long. By drawing on network theory we hypothesise that an active networking by the firm moderates the negative relationship between the time to innovation and the rate of innovation. Our theoretical model is confronted with a sample of 203 Swedish SMEs. Our results show that a late innovation start leads to a continued low rate of innovations. Late starters however, can compensate their late start by active networking for resources. Thus, innovation rates can be accelerated by an active networking behaviour of the firm
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Publish Year: 2016
Conference: Cape Town (2016)