SMES' INNOVATION AND EXPORT CAPABILITIES: TOWARD A COMMON CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

摘要

Numerous publications try to identify and test empirically the link between innovation and export to explain firms' competitiveness. But it seems that several ways of thinking coexists, without a real consensus. This article proposes a different approach, by considering innovation and export not in terms of impact of the one on the other one, but rather as two complementary activities mobilizing common capabilities (resources, skills, knowledge). These common capabilities represent the capabilities that a company needs to mobilize as a priority to improve its performance regarding innovation as well as regarding export. This article aims to identify the common spaces between innovation and export in terms of current practices within SMEs. At first, the innovation and the export practices were identified in the literature and through a set of interviews with business managers. Then an analysis of similarity put forward the common practices between the innovation and the export processes. The results show that the common practices at least concern: (1) the capitalization of knowledge, (2) the external skills management, (3) the product strategy, (4) the project management, (5) the market strategy, (6) the internal skills management, (7) the acquisition of information.