Entrepreneurial Leadership as a Driver of Innovation Success in Family SMEs in Colombia

Abstract

This chapter aims to analyze if entrepreneurial leadership, regarded as a distinctive feature of entrepreneurial processes, represents an essential element for obtaining satisfactory innovation performance in an emerging context such as Colombia in Latin America. The relationship between entrepreneurial leadership and innovation management works differently in family firms (FF) compared with their non-family counterparts. Indeed, there is no consensus in the literature on the effects of entrepreneurial leadership on innovation success in family small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Exploratory research has been conducted considering a survey held on family SMEs in Colombia. Results highlight the importance of supporting entrepreneurial leadership in order to achieve the innovation goals in these types of organizations and show how these factors change between family SMEs with family CEOs and non-family CEOs. In this sense, although the focus in this chapter is on FF, the conclusions could be to some extent generalized to SMEs.