Organizational innovation in small European firms : a multidimensional approach created by Jorge Gallego, Luis Rubalcaba-Bermejo and Christiane Hipp

Organizational innovations are often neglected in innovation theory. However, organizational change does have an impact on firm output, first directly and second, through its interrelationship with technical innovation. This article focuses on the second aspect. By means of a multidimensional approach, the results show that organizational innovation is of particular relevance in the case of small firms. New empirical evidence is provided at the European level: the data is taken from 18 countries of the CIS4. The results suggest that, in contrast with large enterprises, small firms show an innovation pattern that complements organizational innovation with expenditure on in-house R&D activities and an intensive use of external knowledge. In contrast with earlier research, a broader analysis of countries and industries has been undertaken to show the transferability of previous country and industry-focused results.