Do SME’s innovation strategies influence their effectiveness of innovation? Some evidence from the case of Podkarpackie as peripheral region in Poland

Research background: Innovation is a very important pillar within a knowledge-based economy, in the regional and local perspective as well. A literature review on innovation and SME innovation strategies to their correlation and the possibility of their joint examination. Purpose of the article: The aim of this paper is to explore the SME’s innovation strategies and their impact on effectiveness of innovation in a peripheral region. We investigate the effects of innovation activities not only among small and medium, but also micro firms which are not covered in official innovation surveys by the national statistical offices. We proposed a model of implementing innovation, and tested our hypotheses. Methods: Research was based on data drawn from CATIs carried out among 419 firms, therefore making a conceptual contribution to the knowledge on innovation strategy. The main statistical test for relationships and dependencies was the chi-square independence test. To arbitrate whether there were statistically significant differences between medians due to different factors among enterprises, analysis for variance (H Kruskal-Wallis’ test for k independent samples) procedure was implemented. Findings & Value added: The results of our research show that among SMEs in peripheral regions dominated those which we call ‘pragmatists’ and ‘imitators’ in context of their approach towards innovation. The significance of objective factors showed that there was a lack of enterprises that could play the role of ‘creators of innovation’ in the peripheral region. However, the examined firms more often noticed positive than negative aspects of introduced innovations, which is determined by the scale of enterprise; they were focused mainly on the consequences of innovation for their products and services.