Financial Means’ Competencies and Innovation: Comparative Advantages between SMEs and Big Enterprises

Francis Munier
Additional contact information
Francis Munier: University Louis Pasteur

Chapter 12 in Powerful Finance and Innovation Trends in a High-Risk Economy, 2008, pp 207-223 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The interpretation of Schumpeter’s works (1935, 1939, 1974) leads to the formulation of two major assumptions. The first suggests that a positive relation between an innovation and the power of the monopoly prevails. The second supposes that big companies innovate more proportionally than small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (the intensity of the research increases more than proportionally with size). This conjecture has been analysed in several empirical studies (Kamien and Schwartz, 1975, 1982; Baldwin and Scott, 1987; Scherer, 1992). These works brought answers, but they also show, as recalled by Le Bas (1991), that this question does not present either evident theoretical or empirical proof. According to Scherer (1992), an accepted result would be that big companies are more predisposed to innovate since they have greater means (financial, human, etc.), while the advantage of the small firm in the process of innovation is especially focused on the organizational level. This result led some authors to propose other research. Cohen (1995) notably suggests targeting their work to the concept of competence to study the explanatory factors of the innovating behaviour rather than to try to analyse a direct relation between size and innovation, as an important source of bias (Acs and Audretsch, 1990).

Keywords: Small Firm; Financial Constraint; Innovative Activity; Financing Constraint; Innovative Behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:pal:palchp:978-0-230-58409-9_13

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230584099

DOI: 10.1057/9780230584099_13

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().