New approaches for fostering innovation capacities in low and medium-tech SMEs

Abstract

Understanding innovation activities, enhancing their ability to leverage these strengths in delivering new significant value are the key to sustainable growth of SMEs. Few SMEs can capture value from innovation alone; most have to rely on outside sources for ideas, technologies and knowledge. In order to get a valuable input from outside, SMEs need to go through the difficult process of searching the environment, identifying a ‘matching’ competence and combine it with their internal capabilities. Ability to exploit external knowledge to their advantage referred to as absorptive capacity, capability to collaborate effectively depends on internal processes, structures and individual competencies. From a practitioners’ point of view here are two key questions: 1) How to know what innovation related competences should be strengthened? and 2) What learning path is most effective? The competence can be defined as the capability to perform the jobs activities in a given professional context, in order to answer organisational requirements thus, to be effective, the content of innovation training should take into account the context, current and future competence needs of a particular company. On the other hand, the delivery of innovation training should have a practical component.