At the centre of the action: innovation and technology strategy research in the small business setting

Article Type: Abstracts From: Strategic Direction, Volume 26, Issue 1

Tan J., Fischer E., Mitchell R., Phan P.Journal of Small Business Management (USA)July 2009Vol. 47 No. 5Start page: 233No. of pages: 30

Purpose – to suggest how small-business theory should be developed. Design/methodology/approach – traces past development of small-business research, outlines the purposes and findings of 28 papers published 1983-2007,and identifies four research issues of theory building, the range of opportunities for theory building, social responsibility of small business and technological entrepreneurship. Acknowledges that small-business research has played a key role in entrepreneurship research, but calls for both greater rigour in theory-building and transfer of theories from other disciplines to the small-business domain, submitting that theory building should be guided by Weick’s criteria of generalizability, simplicity and accuracy. Contends that new theory can be built, and existing theory developed, from study of small and new ventures, but observes that academic journals have been able to publish only a limited number of conceptual articles in the last five years, asserting that it is necessary for scholars to write both conceptual and inductive papers based on qualitative data. Proposes research based on the idea that the social responsibility of small business is to not live or die in vain, argues that businesses should not fail without meaning, urges construction of databases containing information on failed businesses, and depicts new-venture templates indicating attributes associated with failed and successful businesses.Article type: Conceptual paperISSN: 0047-2778Reference: 38AR046

Keywords: Entrepreneurs, Innovation, Management theory,Research, Small enterprises, Technology-led strategy