Digital Innovation Strategies in Small and Medium Enterprises
Summary
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) increasingly view digital innovation as a strategic imperative to enhance competitiveness, resilience and environmental performance. With limited resources and expertise, SMEs adopt a range of strategies—from cultivating a firm-wide digital orientation to leveraging external platforms and frugal business models—to orchestrate and integrate digital technologies into operations, customer engagement and product development. Key approaches include the systematic alignment of digital tools with strategic objectives, the cultivation of dynamic capabilities to sense and seize emerging opportunities, and the embedding of sustainability principles through digital solutions such as the Internet of Things and eco-friendly process innovation. Globally, these strategies have enabled SMEs to co-innovate across borders, improve internal processes and tap new markets, while also contributing to broader goals of green growth and social value creation.
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Digital Innovation Strategies in Small and Medium Enterprises publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in digital innovation strategies in small and medium enterprises across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Digital orientation: A firm’s strategic attitude towards adopting, integrating and prioritising digital technologies and mindsets across its operations and value chain.
Digital platform capability: The organisational ability to deploy, govern and leverage online platforms for co-creation, collaboration and innovation with external partners.
Digital innovation orientation: A predisposition within a firm to proactively explore, develop and implement novel digital solutions that generate economic, social and environmental value.
References
- Digital orientation and environmental performance in times of technological change. Technological Forecasting and Social Change (2023).
- How digital platform capability affects the innovation performance of SMEs—Evidence from China. Technology in Society (2023).
- Towards Sustainable Digital Innovation of SMEs from the Developing Countries in the Context of the Digital Economy and Frugal Environment. Sustainability (2021).
- Digital Sustainable Entrepreneurship: A Digital Capability Perspective through Digital Innovation Orientation for Social and Environmental Value Creation. Sustainability (2022).
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