ACIC

Innovation is widely acknowledged to be the catalyst to economic growth and SMEs the growth engine. Both have been the focus of European policy makers as a means of improving international competitiveness and consolidating industrial renewal. To counter the problem of increased global competition, for SMEs with limited resources, innovation projects within collaborative networks (CNs) are increasingly considered to be a way in which they can compete and grow. The literature has shown that collaborative interactions can improve SME innovativeness and competitiveness. But not much is understood of how SMEs should concretely utilise the resources embedded in CNs within their own organisation, and how they should interact with other SMEs to pursue successful innovation projects. A growing body of empirical evidence further suggests that a firm’s ability to identify, assimilate, transform and apply knowledge known as absorptive capacity (ACAP) (Cohen et Levinthal), plays a critical role in innovation. But there is a dearth of knowledge in terms of how ACAP can be operationalised, both at the strategic and operational levels, to help SMEs, embedded in CNs, to develop successful innovation projects. The major aims of this project are to provide SMEs operating within CNs in industrial clusters, with a novel cost-effective approach and associated tools to enhance innovation within their organisations. This will be achieved by focusing on the following objectives:(i) developing an improved understanding of the knowledge-base, capacities and mechanisms that generate ACAP of SMEs embedded in CNs (ii) operationalising the concept of ACAP by developing a maturity-assessment tool to enable SMEs to measure their absorptive capacity and gauge their performance (iii) and by providing SMEs with an organising tool based on novel serious gaming and socialisation techniques that model ACAP practices in innovation projects to implement best practices and enhance SMEs’ reflexivity. The multi-disciplinary collaboration, the diversity of contexts and originality of the approach, underpins the novelty of this project. First, the project will adopt a multi-disciplinary (management; engineering and informatics) and multi-methodological approach (qualitative and quantitative to build in-depth case studies, and group experimentation to develop applied tools) in close collaboration between industry practitioners and academics. The original tools that will be developed (a maturity grid and organising tool) can be applied in real-life contexts with the objective of impacting SMEs innovation projects embedded in CNs. These deliverables will also be directly useful for Masters and Professional teaching building knowledge and further understanding of ACAP. This research will focus on a range of contexts to understand ACAP in SMEs holistically. The Rhône-Alpes region is characterised by a high number of SMEs embedded in CNs, expected to be fields that bring a high potential to generate more innovation. We will characterise ACAP in different CN configurations Furthermore, the French government has targeted funding to develop “pôle de compétitivité” or clusters to help regenerate economic growth in these post-industrial regions. In France, clusters tend to have top-down structures with formal governance approaches. By contrast, the UK has considerably fewer clusters that are largely market driven with an ad-hoc governance structure. We will use this country comparison to better understand the role that clusters, as “boundary brokers” play in the process of SME innovation and growth driven by ACAP in CNs. Finally we will consider cases in both traditional and creative industries. Early research has suggested there is a different type of ACAP in creative industries and thus by comparing both traditional and creative industries this could provide opportunities for re-configuring ACAP mechanisms to improve cross-industry innovation potential.