Innovation and Export - Manon Enjolras

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of SMEs by improving their skills and strengthening their resources (Francis and Collins-Dodd 2004). By building skills and changing the routine practices and activities of SMEs, the proposed support appears to be more sustainable and effective (European Commission, 2016b). Thus, it would seem that sustainable and targeted support for SMEs is about empowering them with strategic, comprehensive, and cross-cutting skills and resources.

      On the other hand, although the Interreg 2014–2020 strategy devotes an entire axis to increasing the cross-border competitiveness of SMEs and 8 billion euros to SMEs, the support initiatives for SMEs tend to adopt a compartmentalized vision of the aid they offer. Support for innovation and export appear to be two disconnected initiatives, whereas a trend towards coupling these types of support is gradually emerging, according to the European Commission (2007). Indeed, recent studies have shown that companies that are able to manage innovation and international activities are simultaneously more profitable and sustainable over time (Love and Roper 2015).

      According to BPI France (2011a), more than one innovative SME in two is present on the international market. This observation highlights the existence of a link between innovation and exporting, and innovation clearly appears to be a driver of international activities. SMEs that innovate are indeed more likely to engage in global markets than non-innovating companies. Process and organizational innovation, for example, can increase company productivity by reducing production costs and enabling SMEs to achieve the minimum level of efficiency required to cover fixed export costs. Through product innovation, marketing innovation and innovative branding strategies, SMEs differentiate their products from those of their competitors, allowing them to gain market share in international markets (OECD 2018). In particular, greater flexibility and a strong ability to customize and differentiate products can give SMEs a competitive advantage in global markets over larger companies, as they are able to quickly respond to changing market conditions and increasingly shorter product life cycles. For example, a report on the behavior of European SMEs (FedEx 2015) shows that fast-growing SMEs are almost twice as likely to export as declining or stagnant SMEs. Indeed, some inter-country niche markets are dominated by SMEs, and small innovative companies often become key partners for large multinationals to develop new products or serve new markets (OECD 2018).

      The study of the link between innovation and export, when studied in terms of causality, thus leads to a controversial debate for which it seems difficult to find a consensus. This is why some studies try to go beyond this causal vision by proposing a vision in terms of complementarities. Innovation and export would not only be activities that have an impact on each other. They would be complementary activities: if we engage in one, it facilitates engagement in the other (Golovko and Valentini 2011). This notion of complementarity also seems to have an impact at the institutional level. There is currently an emerging trend to couple innovation and export support schemes (European Commission 2007), but this is a topic that is very little addressed in the literature. It would seem, therefore, that the study of innovation and export in SMEs requires a different perspective, one that aims to consider them jointly rather than through a cause-and-effect relationship.

      By way of summary, given the context of innovation and export in SMEs, three observations can be made:

       – the first concerns the limited performance of SMEs on international markets and their difficulty in setting up a successful innovation process. This can be explained by a preponderant constraint directly linked to their small size: the lack of resources and the difficulty to put in place the right conditions to exploit them. Thus, SMEs wishing to progress must structure their internal processes, prioritize their actions and identify adequate improvement levers in view of the means they can mobilize;

       – the second observation concerns the incentive nature of the support offered to SMEs. The schemes mostly offer financial support or information, which appears to be one-off assistance rather than real long-term support. It, therefore, seems necessary to offer support based on individual advice, allowing the company’s organization to be modified by changing the practices and activities in place, and thus offering more sustainable support;

       – the third observation concerns the link between innovation and export. In the scientific literature, this link has traditionally been considered in the form of a cause-and-effect relationship. However, a paradigm shift seems to be emerging, highlighting the need to propose an approach that breaks with this causal vision in order to take into account the complementarity that exists between innovation and export. It is a question of considering these two activities together and not in terms of the impact of one on the other.

      Thus, through this research work, we propose considering the relationship between innovation and export from an original angle. The objective is to formalize the innovation–export relationship in SMEs through the complexity paradigm (Morin 1977). This formalization leads to the identification and characterization of a common conceptual space between innovation and export capabilities. This common space gathers the joint innovation–export activities that an SME must develop in order to simultaneously progress in terms of innovation and export. It, therefore, represents a priority area for action to be promoted among companies in order to encourage them to modify their internal practices to exploit synergies and thus optimize the mobilization of their resources. From an operational point of view, the valorization of this common space requires the proposal of a support tool to evaluate the degree of mastery of the companies concerning the practices, resources and competencies that make up this common space. The first objective of this diagnostic tool is to draw up a profile of the companies evaluated in order to identify the activities they need to develop as a priority in order to successfully complete their export and/or innovation process. The second objective is to propose personalized recommendations based on their strategy to promote the emergence of innovation–export synergies. The implementation of these recommendations allows the company to progress both in terms of innovation and export, relying on synergies to mobilize its resources in an adequate and optimized way.

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