MSME technology adoption, entrepreneurial mindset and value creation: a configurational approach

Abstract

For micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) technology adoption provides a basis to accelerate their growth ambitions and to enhance their value-creation activities for disruptive and competitive purposes. However, we have a limited understanding of how MSMEs engage in new technology adoption for value-creation purposes. Integrating the determinants of technology adoption and entrepreneurial mindset—cognition and opportunity recognition—the purpose of our paper is to examine what factors determine MSME technology adoption. Set in the Danube region of Europe we focus on MSMEs in the automotive, electronics and IT sectors that are traditionally characterized by the relatively rapid uptake of high-performance computing (HPC). As a new technology, HPC combines infrastructure and applications that are highly complex and can be deployed in an array of contexts to address market-based opportunities. Employing fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, we find the potential presence of a complementary relationship between the technological, organisational, and environmental factors and the entrepreneurial mindset for technology adoption among MSMEs for value creation. We find that cognition is not a necessary condition for technology adoption and opportunity recognition is. Furthermore, we unveil that opportunity recognition combined with organisational or environmental factors can enable technology adoption among MSMEs.