1. Directions for Enhancing Innovation within Romanian SMEs.
- Author
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Purcarea, Irina
- Subjects
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INNOVATIONS in business , *SMALL business management , *ECONOMIC development , *CORPORATE culture - Abstract
SMEs account for over 99% of all European businesses and in recent years they have proved themselves to be the engines of economic growth, along with the main sources of new employment. Today's competitive environment calls for a dynamic, self-sustaining culture of innovation within SMEs in order for them to be better equipped to face future challenges. The paper is built on the doctoral research carried out by the paper's author, along with the author's involvement in the national research project INOVEX „Increasing the quality performances within cooperative processes in SMEs through expert systems in innovation engineering and management‟ and the research project entitled "Instrument for evaluating Romanian SMEs maturity at strategic and operational level for sustaining their performances on the long-term". For the INOVEX research, several categories of basic processes were taken into account and within each category, 92 sub-processes and 227 activity modules (categories of problems) were identified. The main objective of the paper is to provide possible directions for sustaining innovative activities within Romanian SMEs. The first section discusses the problems identified in Romanian SMEs regarding several processes selected, namely research-development and introducing large-scale innovation, processes for continuous improvement of product development activities and institutional development processes. In the second part of the paper, the main types of innovation within SMEs are emphasized, along with the factors that are most likely to be considered by SMEs within the process for innovation planning. The paper also seeks to analyze the process of improvement related to organizational processes, products, and management system of Romanian SMEs that cover the objectives for improvement defined by the organization, employees' role in the process of improvement as well as the potential rewards offered for the employees 'involvement. Based on the main constraints identified in Romanian SMEs concerning innovation-related processes along with the analysis of the framework for implementing innovative activities within SMEs, the paper intends to identify possible directions to follow by Romanian SMEs in becoming more innovation-oriented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2010