Small Business And Innovation

Utilizing a unique data set, Zoltan Acs and David Audretsch provide a rich empirical analysis of the increased importance of small firms in generating technological innovations and their growing contribution to the U.S. economy. They identify the contributions made by both small and large firms to the innovative process and the manner in which market structure, and the firm-size distribution in particular, responds to technological change. The authors' analysis relies on traditional theories of industrial organization and tests existing hypotheses, many of them previously untested due to data constraints. Innovation and Small Firms brings together two large data bases recently released by the U. S. Small Business Administration - one directly measuring innovative activity for large and small firms, the other providing a detailed census of economic activity for all manufacturing firms and plants across a broad spectrum of industries. Acs and Audretsch describe and evaluate the data bases in the context of the literature on innovation, market structure, and firm size. They present their findings on the presence of small firms, small-firm entry in manufacturing, small-firm growth and flexible technology, and mobility and firm size. They compare static and dynamic measures of small-firm viability and address the relationships between R&D, innovation, and productivity, and analyze the interaction between technological regimes and the role of government in innovation.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, small businesses are especially vulnerable. This is one of the first books that explicitly examines the linkage between crisis and entrepreneurship with a specific focus on small businesses. The book adopts a holistic approach and outlines strategies that small business owners can utilize as well as business opportunities that are available in these new market conditions. It also provides a comparative analysis of the current and future market conditions to enable a better understanding of how institutional structures can facilitate or hinder growth. The book also goes on to explain why and how creativity and innovation can help to mitigate the impact of such a crisis on business and highlights why business continuity is especially crucial to family-owned businesses. This timely publication will help to guide small business owners and entrepreneurs to maintain business continuity and build up their resilience in a challenging business climate.

In 1992, Congress for the first time explicitly directed the federal agencies making SBIR grants to use commercial potential as a criterion for granting SBIR awards. In response, the Department of Defense developed the SBIR Fast Track initiative, which provides expedited decision-making for SBIR awards to companies that have commitments from outside vendors. To verify the effectiveness of this initiative, the DoD asked the STEP Board to assess the operation of Fast Track. This volume of original field research includes case studies comparing Fast Track and non-Fast Track firms, a large survey of SBIR awardees, and statistical analyses of the impact of regular SBIR and Fast Track awards. Collectively, the commissioned papers and the findings and recommendations represent a significant contribution to our understanding of the SBIR program.

There has been growing interest on business models among academics and practitioners in recent years, as business model describes how an organization creates, distributes and captures value and, therefore, can be considered the DNA of the organization. Recently, factors related to digital transformation, the vital role of sustainability and social aspects, along with an increasing globalization, have pushed towards radical transformations in business models. This book aims to further our knowledge on business model innovation in new contexts of analysis and with new perspectives of investigation. Insights from business model innovation are presented from studies focusing on start-ups, small businesses and large businesses to provide a bigger picture on new dynamics connected to digital transformation, sustainability, new global relationships. As such, the scope is on new ways to create value, new components and dynamics (such as digitalization and sustainability) concerning the key elements of the business model (value creation, value configuration and value capture), and new relationships between actors that may foster business model innovation. It represents a valuable resource for practitioners willing to innovate business models, academics aiming at finding new research lines, and students keen to learn more about business models.

Small businesses have increasingly been recognized as a source of innovation, and one way in which the Federal government encourages such innovation is through the Small Business Innovation Research program. SBIR sets aside 2.5 percent of federal agencies' R&D budgets for R&D grants to small business. Although the program's budget was nearly $1.2 billion in 1998, SBIR has been subject to relatively little outside review. As part of the STEP's ongoing project on Government-Industry Partnerships, the Board convened policymakers, academic researchers, and representatives from small business to discuss the program's history and rationale, review existing research, and identify areas for further research and program improvements.

This informative book provides a critical and comprehensive review of the research on innovation in small businesses particularly, the family-owned businesses. Innovation in Small Family Businesses explores how innovation is developed and carried out in small family-owned businesses, the factors underpinning it, and the innovation drivers and barriers in these firmsÕ context. Sylvie Laforet also offers suggestions on how innovation can be fostered and perhaps, sustained in small family-owned businesses and discusses the governmentÕs role in this. The book makes an important contribution to the theoretical development of family firmsÕ and small businessesÕ innovation. The detailed and critical literature review will provide useful reference points for both academics and students and identifies avenues for future research for the area. Policymakers and practitioners will also find this compact compendium insightful.

Moving beyond the narrow confines of a "how to" of Innovation management, The Business of Innovation sets out to track, trace and provide testimonies of innovation practice in small to large-scale organisations from countries around world. Through a combination of contemporary economic and social theory, and an array of practical examples from a wide range of sectors and industries, Jay Mitra offers critical insight into how global innovation works, where it works and most importantly, who makes it work, with an emphasis on innovative women. Suitable for postgraduate, doctoral and MBA students on business management and innovation courses and practitioners looking for a critical insight into the business of innovation.