Microfirms and innovation in the service sector

David B. Audretsch, Alexander Kritikos and Alexander Schiersch
Additional contact information
David B. Audretsch: Institute for Development Strategies at Indiana University Bloomington

Small Business Economics, 2020, vol. 55, issue 4, No 8, 997-1018

Abstract: Abstract In the context of microfirms, this paper analyzes whether the link between the three aspects involving innovative activities—R&D, innovative output, and productivity—hold for knowledge-intensive services. With especially high start-up rates and the majority of employees in microfirms, knowledge-intensive services (KIS) have a starkly different profile from manufacturing. Results from our structural models indicate that KIS firms benefit from innovation activities through increased labor productivity with highly skilled employees being similarly important compared to R&D for creating innovation output in microfirms. Moreover, the firm size advantage of large firms found for manufacturing almost disappears in KIS, with start-ups and young firms having a higher probability of initiating innovation activities and of successfully turning knowledge into innovation output than mature firms.

Keywords: Microfirms; MSMEs; R&D; Service sector; Innovation; Productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L25 L26 L60 L80 O31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11187-020-00366-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Journal Article: Microfirms and innovation in the service sector (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:55:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s11187-020-00366-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-020-00366-4

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().