Collaborative innovation in the family SME: conceptualization, goals, and success factors

Abstract

In a constantly changing environment, collaborative innovation enables the knowledge creation and new product designs, the improved efficiency of the production process and the reduction of time-to-market. However, the achievement of such results in the family SME depends mainly on the unique characteristics of this type of organization, which in turn represent the most widespread kind of business worldwide. Therefore, the objective of this article is to analyze how the composition of the management team, and the factors related to the capabilities –cognitive factors, absorptive capacity, and innovative trajectory- and the attitudes –preservation of SEW legacy and intra-organizational behavior- of the decision makers, mediated mainly by the influence of the family, affect when designing and implementing collaborative innovation processes in a successful way.