The quest for innovation in emerging markets A study on the effect of firm-level resources and institutions on innovative behaviour of small and medium enterprises in India and Vietnam
Keywords
Loading...
Authors
Issue Date
2017-07-10
Language
en
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The literature shows us that innovation and sustainable economic growth are effective ways to eradicate poverty. New technological breakthroughs are introduced every day, all over the world. However, many emerging countries still struggle to catch up with their western counterparts. This thesis builds on the assumption that in their quest for innovation and growth, firms in emerging countries are being limited by their institutional environment. The initial goal of this thesis was to investigate how institutions help or limit small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to use their resources to improve their innovative performance. However, the data told us little about institutional enhancers, but more on institutional inhibitors and how SMEs use their resource to cope with them. Hence, a shift was made towards institutional voids and firm-level resource utilization based on those voids. The data shows us that SMEs in emerging countries often lack the ability to produce radical and ground breaking innovations, but are able to add small incremental changes and improvements to their products, services and processes. We believe that SMEs from emerging countries are less able of bringing forward radical innovations due to the presence of several institutional voids. SMEs are confronted with different product market-, labour market-, capital market- and political system voids. To overcome these voids, firms must effectively use their resources in order to survive in these hostile and challenging environments. Firms develop their own internal training programs, invest in the development of new technologies, locate near similar and complementary firms, and build relationships with other domestic and foreign organizations.
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen