Innovation and Export. Manon Enjolras

Innovation and Export - Manon Enjolras


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rights of Manon Enjolras to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2021945495

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

      ISBN 978-1-78630-620-3

      Acknowledgments

      This book is drawn from the work of a French doctoral thesis on the topic “Methodology for analyzing the innovation and export capabilities of manufacturing and process SMEs: identification and characterization of a common space with a view to developing a multi-criteria decision support tool”, conducted between 2013 and 2016 at the ERPI laboratory of the University of Lorraine (located in France). They were financially supported by the UIMM, the F2I, the Lorraine regional council as part of the PRINCIP research chair as well as the InnovENT-E initiative of excellence (IDEFI). This thesis has paved the way for new research projects that also feed this book. They have themselves benefited from the support of the CNRS and the University of Lorraine (PEPS Mirabelle CIIPME project), as well as the Lorraine University of Excellence Initiative of the PIA2 from the French government (ANR-15-IDEX-04-LUE).

      First of all, I would like to thank the Research Network on Innovation (RNI), as well as the ISTE Group, for giving me the opportunity to publish this book by awarding me the Honoris Causa prize for the promotion of research in the study of innovation. It is a real pride to see our thesis work valued in this way and a great opportunity to continue to develop it within a long-term research project.

      I would also like to thank the ERPI laboratory of the University of Lorraine for allowing me to carry out this thesis and for allowing me to build my research path on a daily basis within its team. I would also like to express my gratitude to my two thesis directors, Mauricio Camargo and Christophe Schmitt, without whom none of this would have been possible.

      Finally, I would like to warmly thank my family and friends who have always supported me in my projects, both professional and personal.

      Introduction

      Innovation and internationalization have been identified as two of the main driving forces of economic growth (Pla-Barber and Alegre 2007; Bołkunow 2019). And while globalization has changed the competitive playing field for all companies, this is especially true for small organizations within which available resources are limited (Etemad 2004; Szczepanski 2016).

      The internationalization of a company can take several forms: import, external growth, direct/indirect export, etc. For this research work, we focus on a specific mode of internationalization: exporting. Several studies point out that exporting is one of the most common ways to enter the foreign market in the early stages of SME internationalization (Bianchi and Wickramasekera 2016). Thus, throughout this book, we will define exporting as the internationalization strategy aimed at positioning our products and services outside the geographic boundaries of our home country.

      Supporting SMEs in their innovation and export activities is, therefore, a major challenge. Indeed, SMEs are the most common form of business organization and the largest provider of employment in the world. Indeed, they represent more than 95% of industrial enterprises in OECD countries (European Commission, 2016a). Consequently, they represent an extremely important economic stake and supporting them in their innovation and export efforts is therefore crucial. It seems essential to help them improve their internal practices in order to change their behavior and improve their performance while adapting to the environment in which they operate.

      In this respect, there is currently a real political and economic will to take into account the considerable stakes involved in the development of SMEs. All over the world, numerous support services are offered, at the regional or national level, by public and private institutions. However, and despite the important commitment of the European Union and local authorities (innovation and export have been identified as priorities for action at the European level, such as the Horizon 2020 program), support for SMEs in innovation and international activities is not always adapted.

      For example, it seems that current support services are mainly represented by financial or informational incentives (Enjolras et al. 2015). If the main difficulties encountered by SMEs, both for innovation and export, do indeed concern access to resources, it is nevertheless worth questioning the relevance of a temporary increase in resources without the organization and strategy necessary for their proper exploitation being put in place. In the case of incentive schemes, the resources provided to SMEs are mostly ad hoc, without the organizational and strategic difficulties associated with innovation and export being really addressed. Several European Commission reports have emphasized that the most effective type of support seems to be individualized support, as it allows direct action on the


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