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Role of innovation strategy in the business growth of high-technology SMEs in UKNagaraju, R. January 2015 (has links)
Innovative high-technology SMEs have become a major influencing factor in the success of any modern economy and they increasingly compete in the globalised world with limited resources. Previous research on SMEs at firm level has always taken into consideration the constraints of the resources that an SME faces and the implications of this on their performance and business growth. SMEs have to develop their own unique skills and capabilities, allocating their limited resources appropriately to be able to respond to the changes in the external business environment that pose risks to the success of their innovation and its commercialisation. Having an innovation strategy is very important: to have a clear goal and a path to achieve the set goal. This helps high-technology SMEs to decide which factors can influence the success of their innovations, leading to business growth by developing dynamic capabilities to respond to the external changes by allocating their resources at their disposal. This thesis is an empirical analysis of innovation strategy and its role in the business growth of high-technology SMEs. This research study is carried out at firm level. It draws on Resource-Based View and Dynamic Capability theory to explore innovation strategy factors contributing to the better performance of the firm. Four hypotheses were proposed based on the theoretical framework developed through the literature review. They were tested using empirical data. The primary data were collected using quantitative methods through survey questionnaire. Data was collected from 106 high-technology SMEs in the UK. Technological factor, marketing factor, entrepreneurial factor and risk from the business environment were identified as four important factors which are part of an innovation strategy. The results of the study suggest three revised factors: technology, entrepreneurial and government-related risk factors. The initial risk related to business environment was amended to government-related risk factors based on the measurement variables which were loaded to the factor. However, one hypothesis based on the marketing factor failed to support the proposed positive influence on business growth and hence rejected. This calls for further research on the marketing factor in high-technology SMEs. This study recognises the reason behind this paradoxical result, which could be the nature of the high-technology firms participating in this study, which are more dependent on technology-push rather than marketing pull and they do not confirm with the established norms of marketing for the business growth of their firm. This study contributes to the development of knowledge and practice at multiple levels. The research developed a theoretical framework to establish the innovation strategy factors and its influence on business growth and this is validated through empirical data. At the practice level, the results of the study could be used by high-technology SMEs in the UK, and any other high-technology SMEs which are based in a similar economy and business environment, to have better information about innovation strategy. The study could also help policy makers, propose better policy to support innovation of high-technology SMEs in UK.
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Exploration de la capacité d'alliance en R&D des PME de hautes technologies : le cas des entreprises de biotechnologies du Languedoc-Roussillon / Exploring new technology based firms R&D alliance capability : biotechnology SMEs from Languedoc Roussillon case studyHanif, Salwa 04 December 2014 (has links)
La stratégie d'alliance est capitale pour la réussite et la survie des PME des secteurs de hautes technologies (PME-HT). Les partenariats R&D rentrent de plus en plus dans leur business models. Ainsi ce sont bien les PME de ces secteurs qui auraient besoin de développer une capacité d'alliance R&D, dans le sens où c'est une capacité organisationnelle qui permet à l'entreprise de gérer efficacement ses alliances R&D. Or ce concept de capacité d'alliance (CA) est majoritairement étudié dans un contexte de grandes firmes dans la mesure où elles disposent de managers spécialisés en alliances voire de départements alliances. Les PME quant à elles souffrent d'un manque structurel de ressources, notamment de ressources humaines et financières à allouer à l'activité de la gestion des alliances R&D. Pourtant l'innovation dans les secteurs de hautes technologies est portée principalement par les PME actives en gestion des alliances R&D. Notre objectif est d'explorer les pratiques de management des alliances R&D chez ces entreprises afin de répondre à la problématique suivante : Dans quelle mesure une PME de hautes technologies développe-t-elle une capacité d'alliance en R&D ? Nous comptons répondre à cette problématique en comparant les pratiques liées à la capacité d'alliance R&D des grandes firmes rapportées dans la littérature avec celles des PME de notre terrain de recherche. Egalement, nous mobilisons la théorie de la PME afin de lister les spécificités de ce type d'entreprises qui pourraient influencer leur capacité d'alliance. Nous avons étudié les pratiques managériales des PME du secteur des biotechnologies installées dans la région Languedoc-Roussillon. Nous avons sélectionné 20 entreprises parmi les 71 PME de biotechnologies languedocienne. Le critère de sélection a été la performance en matière d'alliances R&D et d'innovation technologique. Nous avons également étudié l'interaction de ces entreprises avec les acteurs du Système Sectoriel d'Innovation (SSI) du LR en ce qui concerne l'activité R&D. En somme, nous avons utilisé la méthode de l'observation non participante et de l'entretien semi-directif (un total de 39 entretiens).Nos résultats montrent que chez les PME-HT il existe deux types de capacité d'alliance en R&D : une CA individuelle et une CA organisationnelle. En l'occurrence dans les plus petites PME-HT seuls quelques individus ont développé cette capacité (dirigeant et responsable R&D. Quant aux autres PME plus âgées et de plus grandes tailles, la connaissance managériale liée à la CA est diffusée et stockée de manière collective dans la mémoire de l'entreprise. A la différence des grandes firmes, et dans les deux cas de figure, ces pratiques restent informelles et non institutionnalisées. Egalement, nous avons mis en évidence l'existence de la fonction informelle de chef de projet d'alliance R&D au sein de ces entreprises. Il s'agit d'un chercheur qui a développé un ensemble de compétences de chef de projet dans un contexte inter-organisationnel. Il s'agit principalement de connaissances en matière de DPI (Droit de Propriété Intellectuelle) et de montage de dossiers de financements publics.Enfin, certains aspects de la gestion des alliances R&D comme la prise de décision collégiale et le recours systématique au contrat comme mode de gouvernance des alliances constituent à nos yeux des facteurs de "dénaturation" de la PME de haute technologie par rapport à l'idéal-type de la PME. Dans un deuxième temps, nous discutons la nature même de la capacité d'alliance des PME de hautes technologies. Nos résultats permettent d'étudier en profondeur le lien entre le niveau individuel et organisationnel d'une capacité organisationnelle. / Alliance activity is a common practice in the high technology industries. Managing R&D alliances successfully is a major issue in such industries. Public policy makers in France announced that supporting high technology SMEs in managing their R&D alliances should become a standard practice among national and regional support agencies to business in the field of innovation activities. To contribute toward the goal of enhancing French high technology industries competitiveness we aim to study the R&D alliance management practices of SMEs within such industries. We are interested in the alliance capability of these firms as a strategic capability that allows the organizations to manage their alliances effectively. According to the state of the art, SMEs R&D alliance management practices are different from what you find at large companies. Presumably R&D alliance capability of high technology SMEs is expected to be different from large companies one. This assumption is based on the view that SMEs are characterized by a special organizational context which is different from large companies. Therefore our research problematic is to determine the extent to which, in high technology industries, SMEs develop a specific R&D alliance capability ? We plan to compare the state of the art concerning SMEs alliance capability with large companies' alliance management practices in high technology sectors. We choose to examine in particular the case of biotechnology SMEs because in this industry R&D alliances are very common practices and are critical to the survival of small firms. In order to comply with geographical and institutional embeddedness of innovation activities in this industry, we go one step further and study biotechnology SMEs from Languedoc Roussillon, a region in the south of France. A qualitative study was conducted in order to gather information about biotechnology SMEs practices concerning R&D alliances. We studied 20 companies ranked among the very successful in managing R&D alliances in the Languedoc Roussillon.Our results bring to light two different R&D alliance capability profiles within high technology SMEs : individual R&D alliance capability within smaller companies and organizational alliance capability within bigger SMEs. For the former companies, only some individuals develop managerial knowledge about R&D alliances, the persons in question are the CEO and/or an R&D top manager. They invested an enormous amount of time and resource in learning skills needed for the R&D alliance life cycle, such as project management tools, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), budgeting, etc. The first person to succeed in developing this individual R&D alliance capability is the CEO. As soon as the R&D activity grows, he tries to delegate his authority over the R&D manager or any other top scientist. For this purpose he starts to coach any scientist that showed interest in developing managerial skills. We call this totally informal coaching process “one-on-one learning process”. Within bigger high technology SMEs, there are practices related to a “collective learning process” aiming to spread managerial knowledge to all the R&D team members. It remains non-formal and non-institutionalized process, since there is no managerial knowledge codification. Actually, all the knowledge is stored only in the company oral memory.We showed many differences in managing R&D alliances between SMEs and large firms in the biotechnology industry. However high technology SMEs use formal contracts as the main governance control of the alliance relationship. They are very careful about IPR formal negotiation and management. In addition to that they use project management tools to plan the alliance implementation stage and even include this planning in the alliance contract. This make us reconsider the hypothesis according to which biotechnology SMEs fit to the SME ideal-type in terms of R&D alliance management practices.
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