Investigating a neglected part of Schumpeter’s creative army: what drives new-to-the-market innovation in micro-enterprises?

Stephen Roper and Nola Hewitt-Dundas ()
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Nola Hewitt-Dundas: Queen’s University Belfast

Small Business Economics, 2017, vol. 49, issue 3, No 3, 559-577

Abstract: Abstract Schumpeterian arguments related to creative destruction place small, entrepreneurial firms at the centre of the innovation process. The exclusion of micro-enterprises (with less than 10 employees) from most innovation surveys means, however, that we know relatively little about innovation among this group of firms. Here, using new survey data on a thousand micro-enterprises, we explore the determinants of new-to-the-market innovation, the basis for the Schumpeterian creative destruction (CD) process. Our results provide strong support for the interactive nature of micro-enterprise innovation and suggest the potential value of a model of interactive creative destruction (ICD). Contrary to some other recent evidence, market-based and supplier-based collaboration both prove important for new-to-the-market innovation. Our results suggest the importance of micro-enterprises as sources of new-to-the-market innovation and the potential value of including such firms in future innovation studies.

Keywords: Innovation; Micro-enterprise; Creative destruction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L1 L26 O32 O38 Q34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11187-017-9844-z

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