Survival and growth of high-tech SMEs: some uncommon strategies

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter (peer-reviewed)peer-review

    Abstract

    Innovation, by its very nature, disrupts the equilibrium of a competitive market and causes uncertainty. To confront it, the enterprise must innovate further. This competition driven innovation (Cantner et al., 2004), which is central to technical progress and responsible for keeping large corporations vibrant, however, creates peculiar difficulties for the new firm. As R&D budgets burgeon and technical change accelerates, innovation becomes even more focused and competitive. Markets take unanticipated paths hammered by the onslaught of innovators. New products spring up and disappear before people have a chance to look at them and the inventors have time to exploit the gains of their creation. The scale of creative destruction wrought by entrepreneurs trying to break into rival markets using innovative edge of their products and processes has been, of late, growing increasingly discomforting. No wonder, the closure rates are mounting and the steady advancements in knowledge continue to leave behind entrepreneurial mass graves. It seems, the new enterprise in the next century is going to awaken to a competitive reality that is both overwhelming and scary. Entrepreneurs everywhere are now facing the classic Schumpeterian competition, the one that strikes not at the margin of profits and output, but at their very lives. Though the technical innovations of the past decades have opened up a whole gamut of opportunities for start-ups, they have also, sharpened the edge of competition and have increased its ability to mop down the relatively inefficient. As efficiency standards rise, survival becomes increasingly difficult for new enterprises. Effective management and exploitation of change of this magnitude and complexity is extremely difficult. Under such intense uncertainty, there seems to be no guarantee of payoffs from any programme to improve technology (Metcalfe, 1997).
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationEnterprise support systems: an international perspective
    EditorsM. Manimala, J. Mitra, V. Singh
    Place of PublicationNew Delhi
    PublisherSAGE Publications Inc.
    Pages276-287
    Number of pages12
    ISBN (Print)9788178299273
    Publication statusPublished - 2009

    Publication series

    NameResponse Books
    PublisherSage Publications Pvt. Ltd

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