Abstract
In dynamic and complex environments, it can be difficult for small and mediumsizedenterprises (SMEs) to achieve business performance, innovate and survive, even thoughthese actions are crucial for economic growth and competitiveness. Competitive intelligence (CI)appears as a strategic practice to help them. Although there are many theoretical studies thatpropose the relationship between CI and innovation, few studies have conducted empiricalstudies in the context of SMEs. The objective of this paper is to investigate how competitiveintelligence enhances innovation performance in the context of a SME. Based on a literaturereview and empirical data from several interviews with managers of one SME, our findingsallowed us to propose a framework showing the contribution of CI to innovation performancerelying on absorptive capacity. Our findings also highlight that a prospector owner-managercan improve the results of CI in the SME and contribute to better innovation performance.
Highlights
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are considered the primary source in creating jobs and economic wealth (Julien 1995; Olawale and Garwe 2010), employing more than 95% of the world’s working population (Pellissier and Nenzhelele 2013)
To our knowledge, there is no framework that explains the role of competitive intelligence (CI) in the innovation performance of SMEs in practice. This paper addresses this gap and proposes a framework for a better understanding on how CI contributes to innovation performance relying on absorptive capacity for better results
The objective of this paper is to investigate how competitive intelligence can enhance innovation performance relying on absorptive capacity to reinforce the potential results in a SME context
Summary
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are considered the primary source in creating jobs and economic wealth (Julien 1995; Olawale and Garwe 2010), employing more than 95% of the world’s working population (Pellissier and Nenzhelele 2013). Most SMEs do not have sufficient resources to invest in R&D (Moilanen et al, 2014). They are not qualified to benefit from government assistance programs for R&D (Institut de la Statistique Quebec, 2002). They are, more than ever, compelled to exploit external information (Amara and Landry, 2005; Davila et al, 2009) by adopting environmental analysis activities such as competitive intelligence (CI) (Guimaraes et al, 2016)
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