Competing internationally through multiple innovative efforts

Increasingly, small firms will be required to compete on international markets in order to grow and survive. This paper reports on a study of 86 small manufacturing firms operating in the metal sector. All firms had adopted one or more advanced manufacturing technology and were considered by the Canadian Association of Manufacturers as process innovative. The basic premise of this research was that in order to compete internationally, a small firm had to develop certain innovative capabilities. These capabilities were not only associated to traditional innovative efforts in R&D and process innovation, but also in supportive organizational capabilities in the form of strategic orientation, technological policy, and technological scanning. Results show that, for these small firms, process innovativeness remains an important competitive factor for international competition and that it is often linked to an aggressive strategic orientation coupled to a short term emphasis on efficiency.

[1]  Steven C. Wheelwright,et al.  Outstanding Manufacturing in the Coming Decade , 1989 .

[2]  Alan H. Kantrow.  The Strategy-Technology Connection : Harvard Business Review , 1988 .

[3]  J. Ettlie,et al.  Organization Strategy and Structural Differences for Radical Versus Incremental Innovation , 1984 .

[4]  David J. Teece,et al.  Capturing Value from Technological Innovation: Integration, Strategic Partnering, and Licensing Decisions , 1988 .

[5]  Alfred Kleinknecht,et al.  More evidence on the undercounting of small firm R&D , 1991 .

[6]  G. Morbey,et al.  How R&D Affects Sales Growth, Productivity and Profitability , 1990 .

[7]  K. Jöreskog,et al.  Intraclass Reliability Estimates: Testing Structural Assumptions , 1974 .

[8]  David B. Audretsch,et al.  Innovation and firm size in manufacturing , 1988 .

[9]  L. Lefebvre,et al.  The shape of the new winner: Innovativeness and the strategic edge in small firms , 1990 .

[10]  P. H. Friesen,et al.  Archetypes of Strategy Formulation , 1978 .

[11]  Joseph G. Morone,et al.  Strategic Use of Technology , 1989 .

[12]  A. Weiss,et al.  Technological Infrastructure and the Implementation of Technological Strategies , 1989 .

[13]  L. Thurow,et al.  A Weakness in Process Technology , 1987, Science.

[14]  John E. Ettlie,et al.  A note on the relationship between managerial change values, innovative intentions and innovative technology outcomes in food sector firms , 1983 .

[15]  Alessandro Sterlacchini,et al.  Innovation, formal vs. informal R&D, and firm size: Some evidence from Italian manufacturing firms , 1990 .

[16]  Alfred Kleinknecht,et al.  Measuring R&D in Small Firms: How Much Are We Missing? , 1987 .

[17]  Daniel L. Orne,et al.  Generic manufacturing strategies: A conceptual synthesis , 1989 .

[18]  Sarah Cooper,et al.  The relationship between product technology and innovation performance in high technology small firms , 1991 .

[19]  P. Swamidass,et al.  Assessing Operations Management from a Strategic Perspective , 1989 .

[20]  Richard J. Rosen,et al.  Research and development with asymmetric firm sizes , 1991 .

[21]  K. Brockhoff.  R&D and marketing productivities from cross-sectional data: A study of German chemical corporations , 1990 .