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IT capabilities for product innovation in SMEs: a configurational approach

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Abstract

With the advent of globalization and the knowledge-based economy, industrial SMEs must constantly innovate to remain competitive. Now, an important research issue in this regard concerns the role played by IT capabilities in enabling innovation processes such as new product development, and in determining the product innovation performance of these organizations. Using a configurational approach grounded in the resource-based view, contingency theory, and the notions of “fit” and equifinality, we argue that IT capabilities can be leveraged for innovation purposes to the extent that they are coaligned and thus constitute IT capability configurations. This paper presents the results of a survey of 588 Canadian industrial SMEs designed to further analyze this issue. Three IT capability configurations were thus empirically identified, that is, IT Defenders (n = 234), IT Analyzers (n = 91) and IT Prospectors (n = 263), the last two being associated to greater product innovation performance.

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Notes

  1. The five IT capability variables are operationalized with “index” instead of “scale” measures [4]. An index variable tends to follow a Poisson-type rather than a normal distribution, i.e. to be right-skewed if the mean is small. Moreover, an index combines elements not expected to be strongly intercorrelated, thus the inappropriateness of Cronbach’s alpha coefficient to test its reliability [14].

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Acknowledgements

Funding was provided by SSHRC (Grant No. 890-2011-0153).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de recherche sur les PME, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, P.O. Box 500, Trois-Rivières, QC, G9A 5H7, Canada

    Louis Raymond, Sylvestre Uwizeyemungu, Bruno Fabi & Josée St-Pierre

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Correspondence to Louis Raymond.

Appendix: Questions posed to measure the SME’s e-business and AMT capabilities

Appendix: Questions posed to measure the SME’s e-business and AMT capabilities

Please indicate the business activities presently realized through the firm’s use of the Internet and the Web:

Selling products to customers:

□

Interacting with customers to improve services:

□

Interacting with business partners to develop new products and services:

□

Prospecting for new customers:

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Developing business intelligence:

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Placing orders to suppliers:

□

Recruiting human resources:

□

Please indicate the manufacturing technologies and systems presently used by the firm:

Computer-aided drafting:

□

Computer-aided design (CAD):

□

Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM):

□

Computer-based bar-coding:

□

Computer-based production scheduling:

□

Enterprise resource planning (ERP):

□

Computer-based production inspection and control:

□

Computer-based quality assurance:

□

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Raymond, L., Uwizeyemungu, S., Fabi, B. et al. IT capabilities for product innovation in SMEs: a configurational approach. Inf Technol Manag 19, 75–87 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10799-017-0276-x

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