Effect of Innovation Strategies on Sme Performance Mediated Competitive Advantages

Abstract

Small and Medium Enterprises and Indonesian Cooperatives (SMESCO) are strategies in promoting and introducing Indonesia's superior products to the international community. Through SMESCO, SME owners can work together on standardization of SME products, SME quality standardization and at the same time a forum for fostering SMEs to market their products, through human resource development programs including seminars, training, workshops and product introduction through online shops and mentoring programs. The research aims to prove and analyse the influence of: innovation strategies on the performance of SMEs in SMESCO Indonesia directly or through competitive advantage; innovation strategy towards competitive advantage; competitive advantage towards the performance of SMEs at SMESCO Indonesia. The research population is all SME companies that partner with SMESCO Indonesia. Sampling is done by probability sampling with a simple random sampling method. Data analysis using Structural Equation Modelling-Partial Least Squares, a sample of 147 small and medium business owners at SMESCO Indonesia. The results of the study prove: (1) The innovation strategy does not directly have a significant effect on the increasing performance of SME companies in SMESCO Indonesia but has a significant effect through competitive advantage; (2) Competitive advantage has a significanteffect on the increasing performance of SMEs in Indonesia.