Innovator's SME are really different from their counterpart, the non-innovator? Evidence from the Brazilian National Survey on Innovation (PINTEC 2005)

• Grant number: 13/08774-5
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: July 01, 2013
• End date: April 30, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Administration - Business Administration
• Principal Investigator: Edmundo Inácio Júnior
• Grantee: Edmundo Inácio Júnior
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Aplicadas (FCA). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Limeira , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Cristiano Morini ; Fernando Antonio Prado Gimenez

Abstract

The purpose of this article is two-fold: the first is to analyze the existing relationship between the typology developed by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) - Stricto-sensu Innovators (SSI), Lato-sensu Innovator (LSI) and Non-Innovator (NI) - and the organizational performance (OP) achieved by them. The second is to verify in the class of innovative enterprises (SSI and LSI) what are the relations between the innovative inputs and outputs in the many dimensions created for this end. The motivation for this study can be synthesized in two different aspects: the theoretical, which suffers from the lack of more general and systematic studies on the innovation and organizational performance in SMEs; the economic, which defends the existing relationship between economic growth, innovative activities and the important role developed by these enterprises in the Brazilian industrial structure. The use of the research entitled "The Survey of Technological Innovation (PINTEC)", conducted by The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) as the main source of data is due to the fact that this is the only national research covering a wide range of issues related to the innovative activities of the enterprises, grounded in widespread theoretical considerations and applied by the majority of the countries composing the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The methodology involved the creations of a number of indicators aiming at evaluate the dimension of the innovative inputs and outputs and organizational performance. Tests of significance, employing standardized difference (or Cohen's d) and analysis of variance (ANOVA), were employed in order to access the differences between the averages of the created indicator throughout the classes of the enterprises of the typology. The finds pointed out to the existence of different patterns of organizational performance among the created classes of typology. We relied on the meaningful and positive relationship which states that the greater the degree of innovativeness of an enterprise, the greater are their indicators of organizational performance. Considering only the innovative enterprises, it was also possible to verify and validate the hypothesis that indicators of innovative efforts keep a strict relationship with those of outputs one reached. (AU)