FACTORS INFLUENCING INNOVATION IN SMES IN ROMANIA

Innovation is a broad concept and it is not in contradiction with tradition. Any entrepreneur, even when working in a traditional sector or businesses with strong traditions such as a family business can be innovative. Innovation is not only pushed by the entrepreneur but is increasingly market pulled. Through an innovation entrepreneur it is wanted to influence his market structure or to develop new markets. Radical innovations introduce new business concepts, which require an ability to organize resources and competence in novel patterns. Enterprises extend their ability to develop new business concepts, their dynamic capability, by accessing external resources. This study proposes to investigate how the use of external resources varies in the course of SMEs innovation processes, and how deployment of external resources is influenced by the nature of the innovation as well as by the context of the innovation process.