The Effect of Local and Global Linkages on the Innovativeness in ICT SMEs: Does Location-Specific Context Matter?

Heidi Wiig Aslesen, Gouya Harirchi

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

    Abstract

    Countries differ significantly with regard to the location-specific contexts in which they are embedded. The aim of this paper is to extend the discussion on the effects of local and global innovation collaborations on the degree of novelty of innovation by considering this context. Our main question is: Does embeddedness in the developed or emerging country context affect the likelihood of benefiting from local or global linkages for innovations with higher novelty? The paper is based on data gathered through a survey of firms in the ICT sector in an emerging economy (India) context and from two Scandinavian countries (Sweden and Norway). The findings of this study show that global linkages do indeed impact the degree of novelty of innovation. However, country context does have a moderating effect. While the effect of global linkages is highly positive on the innovativeness of Scandinavian firms, for the Indian SMEs, the linkages that give novel innovations are the regional ones.
    Original languageEnglish
    JournalEntrepreneurship & Regional Development
    Volume27
    Issue number9/10
    Pages (from-to)644-669
    Number of pages26
    ISSN0898-5626
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2015

    Keywords

    • Degree of novelty
    • External sources
    • Global linkages
    • ICT
    • India
    • Regional linkages
    • Scandinavia
    • SME

    Cite this