 Internationalisation as a stimulus for SME innovation in developing economies: Comparing SMEs in factor-driven and efficiency-driven economiesDavid Smallbone, George Saridakis and Yazid Abdullahi Abubakar Journal of Business Research, 2022, vol. 144, issue C, 1305-1319 Abstract: Given the potential of internationalisation for overcoming constraints in the domestic knowledge and technology of developing economies and thus enabling SME innovation, this study investigates the importance of foreign technology licensing, exporting, and importing for SME innovation in developing economies at different levels of development. Using the lens of institutional theory and the levels of development model, we examine samples of SMEs in the factor-driven economies of Sub-Saharan Africa and the efficiency-driven economies of various European and Central Asian post-socialist countries. Our results suggest that the effects of ‘importing’ and ‘exporting’ on SME innovation strongly depend on the level of the country’s economic development. We also find a positive association between foreign technology licensing and innovation; the effect is stronger in the Sub-Saharan factor-driven economies than in efficiency-driven economies. Keywords: SMEs; Internationalisation; Innovation; Knowledge-based institutions; Levels of development (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:144:y:2022:i:c:p:1305-1319 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.01.045 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
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