IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/wsi/wschap/9781786343482_0005.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

FAST-GROWING SMEs AND THE ROLE OF INNOVATION

In: Promoting Innovation in New Ventures and Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Author

Listed:
  • Christina Grundström
  • Roland Sjöström
  • Anders Uddenberg
  • Anna öhrwall Rönnbäck

Abstract

In a study of 409 Swedish SMEs, the difference between the highest growing, which can be characterized as gazelles, and the lowest growing companies were examined regarding performance change over a four year period and what contributed to the growth from an innovation perspective. It was concluded that, besides growing, the highest growing companies also showed high profitability, increased number of employees, and significantly higher markets shares locally, nationally and internationally than the lowest growing companies. Several traits were found to contribute to this. The highest growing companies had a significantly higher portion of new products as part of the turnover during the four years studied and they perceived themselves as differentiating from their competitors concerning: (1) offering better products, (2) understanding customer needs better, (3) having a higher pace or being more agile, and (4) keeping costs down. They also found it more important to take risks, reinvest any profit, and to focus on growth than the lowest growing companies, and this regardless of industry.

Suggested Citation

  • Christina Grundström & Roland Sjöström & Anders Uddenberg & Anna öhrwall Rönnbäck, 2017. "FAST-GROWING SMEs AND THE ROLE OF INNOVATION," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Joe Tidd (ed.), Promoting Innovation in New Ventures and Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises, chapter 5, pages 107-126, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:wschap:9781786343482_0005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9781786343482_0005
    Download Restriction: Ebook Access is available upon purchase.
    File URL: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9781786343482_0005
    Download Restriction: Ebook Access is available upon purchase.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Innovation; Enterprise; SMEs; Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises; SMBs; Small and Medium-Sized Businesses;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:wschap:9781786343482_0005. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscientific.com/page/worldscibooks .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.