Segmentation Techniques for Innovation Support Services

Abstract

Segmentation of clients is a strategy widely used by companies and marketing units to sell their process. However, this concept is not so well established and widespread in public agencies supporting SME innovation. What are the benefits of designing advanced segmentation strategies for development agencies? Economic development practitioners agree that it’s necessary to provide customised innovation services to companies to get a greater impact. This paper presents how nine development agencies from seven European countries carry out their segmentation strategies to provide tailored initiatives of SMEs’ innovation support. The analysis also identifies common challenges RDA face, and how introducing Big Data Analysis can help them enhance innovation support in their regions.

SME segmentation and regional development agencies’ innovation support measures

“…In order to gather additional information about the use of segmentation by the RDAs, as well as the types of provided innovation support measures, we conducted direct interviews with the nine RDAs mentioned above and five additional RDAs, which for various reasons opted to take part only in this part of the study. A detailed description of the interview process is described by Pelayo et al (2019). Summarizing, we used a questionnaire developed with collaboration with end-users (RDAs) and evaluated by external experts 1 during the tailor-made workshop (for the questionnaire template, see in the supplemental data online).…”

“…The challenge for the public authorities, especially RDAs, is to increase the level and type of the support to the correct groups of SMEs (Égert, 2016;Villarejo et al, 2019). This is possible not only by gaining more knowledge about the companies but also by creating the optimal conditions for firms to access the right knowledge on their own, thereby enabling them to exploit existing knowledge bases and explore novel ideas (March, 1991;Schlaile et al, 2018;Vermeulen & Pyka, 2018).…”