#25 Innovation Culture in SMEs

The Thesis Talks

This master’s thesis examines the decisive organizational factors for practising a successful innovation culture in Danish Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). An extensive amount of literature on the field of innovation, organizational culture and innovation culture have been reviewed, and the relevant literature has by a deductive approach been used as a framework. A comparative case study has been chosen as a strategy to research the field of innovation culture, and here, mixed methods have been used to collect empirical data for the research. Quantitative data have been collected by the use of surveys, and qualitative data have conducted via semi-structured interviews with respondents from six different SMEs in the comparative case study. SMEs have been chosen as cases due to the importance of SMEs in the Danish business industry, and the cases were chosen from Børsen’s gazelle list in 2018. The collected quantitative and qualitative data have been analysed by the use of the framework from the reviewed literature of innovation, organizational culture and innovation culture. Moreover, three business cases from major global companies have been used in the analysis as a framework of how to practise a successful innovation culture. The findings from the analysis have been discussed, and from here it can be concluded that shared basic values are an important decisive factor and the means to create shared basic values are done by the use of artefacts and norms. Furthermore, it can be concluded that the culture in SMEs needs to be built and it needs to be valuable. Risk-taking, encouragement and reward of new ideas in the organization can also be concluded to be decisive organizational factors. Furthermore, a people-centric approach is, in general, a very important approach for SMEs and finally, to hire diverse and creative people, be customer-driven and create a foundation for open innovation can also be concluded to be important for a successful innovation culture in SMEs. However, these principles and approaches can be practised in numerous ways depending on the individual SME.