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Previous studies often assume that business model innovation (BMI) is reflected in an entrepreneurial business model design. We assume that business model reconfiguration (BMR) takes place in more nuanced types and does not always lead to (radical) BMI. By undertaking a mixed methods study with 213 respectively 16 SMEs from the electronic industry, we uncover six basically different types of BMRs and discuss their performance implications. By this, we shape the current understanding of BMR and shed light on variety and implications of different types of BMRs. Our configuration study indicates that firms achieve superior performance when implementing a radically new business model reflected in a new configuration of all three components of the business model: value creation, value proposition, and value capture. Second, BMR can take place in types where only some parts of the business model are extensively changed, while others are only slightly adapted.

Achieving effective innovation is a complex task and during this process, firms [especially small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)] often face obstacles. However, research into obstacles to innovation focusing on SMEs is very scarce. In this study, we propose a theoretical framework for describing these obstacles to innovation and investigate their influence on the innovative performance of SMEs. Data were collected in 2013 through face-to-face interviews with executives of 49 technology SMEs from Germany. The semi-structured interviews were designed on the basis of scales for measuring innovativeness, financial/competitive performance and obstacles to innovation, next to purely open questions. We find that the internal obstacles, lack of know-how, capacity overloading, unclear roles and tasks as well as the external obstacle governmental bureaucracy negatively influence innovative performance of SMEs. However, in contrast to prior findings, this study shows that cooperation ties of firms might also negatively influence the innovative performance.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been leading innovation processes, where the upsurge of digital technology has overpowering implications on competitive positioning, firm’s value chains and overall business model. Value creation facilitated by emerging digital technologies alters costs, as well as process performance. Due to field research and in-depth interviews with owners and managers of SMEs in North-East Italy area, we combine and analyze evidence of the contingent challenges companies face while trying to redesign their business model. Our results point out that being able to accumulate and put into action external ideas can be vital in supplementing internal knowledge base and therefore crucial in escaping technological lock-ins; thus, imposing efforts toward digital transformation offers favorable outcoes.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the current landscape of digital maturity models for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the capabilities embedded in the models using a semi-systematic literature review and semi-structured interviews. Based on current knowledge, our research provides insights into the gaps in maturity model research for SMEs. Our primary findings show that digital maturity modelling, particular for SMEs, is currently a significant topic across several industries but remains limited by the lack of procedural properties and suitable SME-specific capabilities. This is supported by our literature review and initial interview findings. The paper offers a conceptual framework including defined criteria and essential properties. Furthermore, the paper outlines a transparency approach to empirical validation to increase the rigor of future maturity model research.

This study examines the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and innovation on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) export likelihood using a two-stage instrumental variable logistic estimator in 6,844 ASEAN SMEs. Adopting ICT technologies allows SMEs to overcome the constraints faced when exporting, while innovation allows SMEs to gain a competitive advantage. Meanwhile, the ASEAN economies are committed toward regional integration and have implemented policies to develop the SME and ICT sector. Results indicate that both ICT technologies and innovation contribute positively to export likelihood, albeit the magnitude of ICT technologies on export likelihood is greater. Furthermore, the results show that ICT technologies can overcome the constraints faced by marginalized businesses in terms of exporting, and can also enhance export likelihood in the manufacturing industry. Policy implications are discussed.

Small businesses are critical to improving economic development in rural areas of South Africa. However, rural entrepreneurs are still faced with challenges and problems which make the success of small businesses, especially in rural areas, uncertain. This paper investigates business environmental, financial and infrastructural factors that influence the success or otherwise of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in rural areas. Primary data was collected in five rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) from a sample of 374 business owners/managers, with respondents completing a questionnaire. Access to finance and skills shortages were the factors that most significantly differentiated between more successful and less successful rural businesses in KZN. The majority of respondents indicated that poor roads/transport and access to electricity were major problems.

The enforced lockdown and closure of businesses in response to the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in economic crises across the globe, bringing the attention to entrepreneurship and its importance to economic recovery. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on SME’s and the entrepreneurs’ policy preferences based on firm size and industry type. To achieve this, evidence from a Business Support Centre Kosovo’s (BSCK) survey involving 236 SME owners interviewed online is reported. Findings from SME survey suggest the problems with cash flow and reduction of customer demand, among others, are major problems faced by SME’s across all firm size groups and industry types. Findings from factor analysis clustered SME policy preferences into three groups: policy preferences related to financing and liquidity constraints, market related and tax preferences. This study discusses some policy and managerial implications urging the need for more nuanced and variegated understanding of the effect of coronavirus pandemic on SMEs.

This study explores the constraints on women entrepreneurs running SMEs in conflict zones. The research is carried out in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), a conflict affected province in Pakistan close to the border of Afghanistan. The findings reveal that women in the region are in a complex family situation exacerbated by terrorism, which has created stress, depression and fear of failure. Better understanding of their circumstances may aid those seeking to help such businesses in Pakistan and other regions beset by conflict.

While it could be argued that globalisation would diminish the importance of a company’s location, research has shown that in an increasingly complex, knowledge-based and dynamic economy, regional collaboration has in fact become a critical aspect of enhancing competitiveness, locally as well as globally. Still, in order to create sustainable, innovative and successful clusters, interaction and collaboration among its members is necessary, which is not always easy to accomplish and requires actions that stimulate bottom-up activity rather than top-down directives.

Taking a practice-based perspective, this paper explores what cluster management do in their everyday activities to support collaboration among cluster members, based on a qualitative case study of 14 Swedish regional clusters and cluster initiatives. The paper contributes by outlining and discussing two distinct and essential practices–orchestrating and narrating.

Small businesses face multiple constraints on innovating that open innovation (OI) has potential to help overcome. The aim of this study is to examine the association between business group affiliation and the extent of OI engaged in by SMEs. Unlike independent SMEs, those that have affiliations might benefit from internal and also external networks to initiate partnerships to innovate. We analysed data collected from 711 French SMEs that engage in innovation to assess the association between business group affiliation and open innovation practices. We found that business group affiliation has no significant relationship with the degree of engagement in open innovation or with partnership openness. Nevertheless, we found that affiliation to an international group influences the geographical openness of SMEs’ innovation. These findings contribute to our understanding of open innovation among SMEs by acknowledging the geographical challenges of partnerships in open innovation.

Violation of Lorentz invariance and CPT symmetry is a predicted phenomenon of Planck-scale physics. Various types of data are analyzed to search for Lorentz violation under the Standard Model Extension (SME) framework, including neutrino oscillation data. MiniBooNE is a short-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment at Fermilab. The measured excesses from MiniBooNE cannot be reconciled within the neutrino Standard Model (νSM); thus it might be a signal of new physics, such as Lorentz violation. We have analyzed the sidereal time-dependence of MiniBooNE data for signals of the possible breakdown of Lorentz invariance in neutrinos. In this brief review, we introduce Lorentz violation, the neutrino sector of the SME and the analysis of short-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. We then present the results of the search for Lorentz violation in MiniBooNE data. This review is based on the published result.

Enriching the literature on innovation and knowledge management, this paper examines the impact of various types of innovation (product, process, marketing, and organization) on the knowledge sharing of SMEs through transformational leadership. A total of 437 samples were collected from SMEs owners/managers in the service sector of a developing economy through a quantitative method. The data were analyzed using a SMART PLS-SEM. The findings confirmed the hypotheses that innovation have a significant influence on knowledge sharing; whiles as transformational leadership had a non-moderating effect. Besides consolidating the existing theory on the importance of innovation for explaining a variation in knowledge sharing activities, the findings also inform SMEs and policymakers to be cautious of implementing transformational leadership style as it may have a non-moderating impact in today’s entrepreneurial activities. Finally, we believe that this study will provide researchers with some key aspects to explore in this area of study and encourage applications of objective and subjective measures to improve the validity of results.

This paper outlines a detailed and systematic method for revealing and mapping out the network mobilised in the development of a discrete innovation. This is termed a focal action-set. Important to the utility of this approach has been the development of a set of conventions for the graphical expression of the network and its components: actors, links and flows. It is argued that the network graphic provides a powerful, though under-utilised, tool for the representation of relational data. It may be employed, for example, to reveal variations in network configuration and to highlight key networking or boundary-spanning actors. The network mapping approach is illustrated through three cases of small firm innovation drawn from a wider investigation of award-winning technological innovations. A comparison between the network maps show a variation in the key boundary-spanning interactions, which is related to the organisational background of the entrepreneurial actor.

To date, relatively few studies have examined information and communication technologies (ICT) use in the subset of SMEs known as micro-enterprises. Even fewer have looked at agricultural micro firms. The study presented here compares ICT use among micro-enterprises and SMEs in the agricultural sector. Results indicate extensive use of computers and the Internet, especially for basic ICT functions like email, online purchasing and online business-related research, regardless of firm size. Website ownership is less widespread; larger SMEs are more likely than micro-enterprises to have a website. A number of other ICTs are used similarly by both groups. Among different sized micro-enterprise firms, larger micro-enterprises are more likely than smaller ones to have a website and to conduct financial activities online. However, growth does not result in different adoption rates among micro-enterprises for most internet ICTs. The study also investigates micro-enterprise use of emerging social technologies such as instant messaging, chat, blogging, etc. Perceptions of ICT benefits are also discussed.

We investigate the extent to which product innovation moderates the relationship between capabilities and competitive advantage among small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Using resource-based and capabilities theories, we examine capabilities as organisational routines, focusing on job rotation and multi-skilling. We examine competitive advantage by using logistic regression to assess the probability of top performance in productivity relative to most other firms in the same industry. Considering the path-dependence in developing capabilities and innovation, we use a longitudinal sample of 300 UK manufacturing SMEs in traditional and high-technology industries to evaluate the effects of innovating and using capabilities continuously over time. The results suggest that firms using job rotation or multi-skilling and introducing product innovations consistently from 2002 through 2004 are more likely to be top performers in 2004. The findings support a theoretical model according to which the association between capabilities and competitive advantage is moderated by innovation.

Exogenous shocks and environmental changes may force small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to change and innovate their business models. However, their readiness and ability to do so could depend on firm-level characteristics. This paper investigates how two firm-level factors—size and age—impact SMEs’ engagement in business model innovation in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Using World Bank Enterprise Survey data covering 2,115 SMEs from 12 countries, this study shows that the age of an SME is negatively associated with business model innovation. The finding also shows that, contrary to the hypothesis posed in this study, the size of an SME impacts business model innovation positively. The study contributes to the understanding of antecedents of business model innovation in times of environmental change and uncertainty.

The entrepreneurship literature teaches us that the aspirations and competence of SME owner-managers as well as their strategic management behaviour can influence both the development and performance of their firm. However the research issues that surround the owner-manager's business venturing mode, that is, whether he or she has created a new firm, acquired an already existing firm, or acceded to a family firm's leadership and ownership by succession and/or inheritance, have rarely been addressed in an integrated manner. Now, founders, acquirers and successors may have fundamentally different strategic profiles, that is, in terms of the strategic capabilities they aim to develop and the type of performance they seek for their firm. In aiming to identify individual correlates and organizational effects of the entrepreneur's business venturing mode, an empirical study of 357 Canadian and French SMEs was thus undertaken. The results reveal significant differences between the three groups of owner-managers, that is, between the 196 founders, 96 acquirers and 65 successors with regard to their competence and motivations and with regard to the strategic capabilities and business performance of their firm. The results also reveal the owner-manager's business venturing mode to be a significant predictor of the firm's market and HR capabilities as well as its growth, productivity and profitability.

Business transfers are linked to both the beginning and the end of entrepreneurial processes. A person can become an entrepreneur by acquiring an existing business instead of starting one, and exit from entrepreneurship can occur through selling the business. Business transfers are gradually becoming more common among small businesses, largely due to entrepreneurs’ aging, and thus deserve attention from entrepreneurship scholars. In particular, the issue of why and how business transfer negotiations fail without achieving a transfer has received little research attention. The purpose of this paper is to explore this phenomenon from potential buyers’ and sellers’ perspectives. The findings are based on a sample of 156 responses. The results suggest that the problems occurring in unfinished business transfers are quite numerous and the gaps between the views of the two negotiating parties are wider than in cases where business transfer negotiations are concluded successfully, indicating that the initial negotiation positions can be crucial. This research proposes some key elements to consider when planning an exit by business transfer and highlight the importance of unfinished small business transfers as an essential element of a dynamic business transfer market; a substantial proportion of the potential buyers and sellers are satisfied with the outcome even though the transfer did not occur.

Developing new services is vital for a service-based company to succeed in the long run. This requires both innovation capability and understanding customer needs. Previous research has shown that if a firm wishes to develop an innovation superior to the competition, it must have both a strong technology orientation and a strong market orientation. The objective of this study was to examine the effect of market orientation and technology orientation on service innovation capability in SMEs operating in the field of social and health care. In addition, this study examined the obstacles to using digitalization and new technologies in service innovations. Mixed methods design was applied so both quantitative and qualitative data was used. The results from the quantitative part of this study show that both technology orientation and market orientation have a positive and statistically significant effect on service innovation capability in SMEs operating in the field of social and health care. Furthermore, market orientation is the most important variable in the model. The results from the qualitative element again show that some of the hindering factors of using digitalization and new technologies arise from practices and attitudes of social and health care actors but others arise from the digitalization and new technologies themselves.

Web 2.0 as a contemporary phenomenon receives considerable attention by IS scholars due to its perceived transformational impact on businesses. This paper critically elaborates on the value creation potential of Web 2.0 for small and medium enterprises (SME). By conducting an inductive study we reveal that SMEs can effectively use Web 2.0 as a means to support customer acquisition, alleviate resource limitations and to maintain customer enthusiasm associated with the customer purchasing process. In case that a high customer convenience is required which is based on the involvement of different parties or on personal service support, there is hardly any Web 2.0 value creation potential. This research contributes to the domain of business modeling by assessing the notion of value in a Web 2.0 setting. It also contributes to IS research on Web 2.0 adoption.