Small and Medium Enterprises collaborations with knowledge intensive services: an explorative analysis of the impact of innovation vouchers

Abstract

This study analyses the effects and dynamics behind a new type of innovation policy for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs): innovation vouchers. This policy is aimed at encouraging SMEs to collaborate with universities and with organisations offering Knowledge Intensive Services. Despite its innovativeness and growing diffusion, the innovation voucher has received only limited attention in the literature. After reviewing the literature on R&D collaborations and innovation vouchers, the article conducts in-depth analysis on two innovation voucher programs in the Lombardy region (Italy). The analysis is based on seven case studies of SMEs that have benefitted from this policy. The results highlight how innovation vouchers have influenced the development of innovation projects and technological collaboration in SMEs. The article concludes with discussion on the effectiveness of the voucher policy, its limitations and policy implications.

The effect of public support on senior manager attitudes to innovation

“…As demonstrated elsewhere, direct public support for innovation induces learning within organisations, namely, experiential learning through the experience of preforming the innovation project and inter-organisational learning through interactions with funded collaborative partners (Autio et al, 2008;Clarysse et al, 2009). Focusing on innovation vouchers, an increasingly prevalent form of public innovation support that funds short-term collaborative projects to solve innovation problems for micro and smaller firms (Bakhshi et al, 2015;Sala et al, 2016), we argue that the learning processes induced by innovation vouchers provide new and persuasive evaluative information to senior managers that positively influence their support for innovation, risk tolerance and openness to external knowledge.…”

“…Thirdly, despite growing attention to individuals within the innovation process (Enkel et al, 2017;Kraiczy et al, 2015a), research has focused on the firm level impacts of public support (Kang and Park, 2012;Radas et al, 2015), thus limiting insight into the impacts on individual organisational members. Finally, despite constituting an increasingly prevalent component of the policy mix targeted to micro and smaller firms throughout Europe, empirical evidence on the effectiveness of innovation vouchers remains limited (Bakhshi et al, 2015;Sala et al, 2016).…”

Use of innovation vouchers for the regional innovation environment development

“…It proves to be true, however, that companies consider the process as a complex one, as indicated by Sala, Landoni, and Verganti (2015) [18]. Also, as evidenced by the interviews with the business representatives, the innovation vouchers also have the strategic potential to initiate and develop cooperation between businesses and research institutions, which can develop into long-term and mutually beneficial cooperation.…”

“…Sala, Landoni and Verganti (2015) [18], Langhorn (2014) [13], Hemert, Nijkamp & Masurel (2013) [11], who show the ability of SMEs to flexibly develop innovation in collaboration with the research organizations. Application of the innovation voucher tool is connected with introducing of such concepts as regional innovation systems (Cooke, Uranga & Etxebarria, 1997) [4], clusters and networking (Bathelt, Malmberg & Maskell, 2004) [2] and the triple helix (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000) [9], according to which public administration should actively promote innovative changes in the regions.…”

Public Policies for Creativity and Innovation: Promoting the Orange Economy in Latin America and the Caribbean 

“…Coordination failures and the uncertainty derived from the intangible nature of creative content may hinder collaboration between different actors (OECD, 2010;Sala, Landoni, and Verganti, 2016). Therefore, public interventions can also focus on correcting these failures by strengthening the links between agents participating in the creative economy.…”