The Propensity of SMEs to Innovate: A Cross – Country Outlook

Irene Fafaliou (), Marinos Stefanitsis () and Aelita Skarzauskiene ()
Additional contact information
Marinos Stefanitsis: National Bank of Greece , Business Processes Department
Aelita Skarzauskiene: Mykolas Romeris University, Faculty of Social Informatics

SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, 2014, vol. 64, issue 3, 94-115

Abstract: Although small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) involvement in the innovation process is a long standing issue and recently has resurged in the relevant literature, building and sustaining innovation is a hard and non linear work. The purpose of the paper is to explore the propensity of SMEs to innovate drawing evidence from three different countries and a wide variety of sectors and firms’ ages and sizes. In particular, this paper focuses on differences between various characteristics of the surveyed SMEs and attempts to establish links with firms’ tendency to innovate. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey addressed to a sample of 336 firms located in Greece, Croatia, and Lithuania. Findings suggest a somewhat problematic relationship between Greek and Croatian firms and their involvement to innovation. Lithuanian firms, however, seem to be more committed to innovation since they employ a more dynamic approach to innovation process and its implementation.

Keywords: innovation; small and medium-sized enterprises; Greece; Croatia; Lithuania (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L20 O31 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://spoudai.unipi.gr/index.php/spoudai/article ... /200/92-544-1-PB.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:spd:journl:v:64:y:2014:i:1:p:94-115

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business from SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, University of Piraeus Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business ().