Strategic Innopreneurship In The New Business World “Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises as Hubs of Innovation”

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to the existing cumulative knowledge in the area of business management; by focusing on the relationships among the concepts of entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, innovation and innovativeness, under the umbrella of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs), which act as the potential power units and the engines of innovation of the business world. In the contemporary business arena, via which all the formats and forms of doing business have changed catastrophically; within the global framework of a single marketplace, world competition has reached its peak level. Thus, the rules of the game in this regard, are re-determined. Eventually, enterprises are compelled gradually to be more innovative in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. SMEs, constitute a major space throughout the business and trade
environment of the world economies by their characteristics such as being more open to change, as a natural outcome of their flexible structures, their enhanced capability to adapt to change, and their skill on implementing innovations more easily, compared to larger enterprises. In the new business world, only innovation-based ventures, in other words, the enterprises which are able to commercialize their innovative business ideas and maintain their position by sustaining their innovative and intrapreneurial activities; will be able to surpass their rivals and survive in the long-run. From this point of view, it is not enough to understand and apply the concepts of traditional entrepreneurship and/or intrapreneurship in order to succeed in the new economic order. Beyond these terms, a new concept, namely innopreneurship, shall be adopted which internalize innovative entrepreneurship, and also the intrapreneurial efforts towards innovation. In this context, SMEs emerge as the hubs of innovation, where the seeds of innopreneurship are spread and developed. Stemming from here, within the boundaries of this study, the literature has been scrutinized; and in connection with the subject, the key to sustainable competitive advantage is highlighted as possible to be achieved contemporarily; only after converting the concepts of entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and innovation in an integrative approach into the form of strategic innopreneurship. Consequently, the main focus of this paper is: How should the new concept emerging as a result of the structural characteristics of the new business world, namely innopreneur, be discussed and what are the attributes of her? Together with the answers given to the questions above, in a proactive manner, it will be possible to become the sources of new ideas and inventions and convert them into innovations via commercialization. Eventually, it will lead to strategic advantage. SMEs, with the potential they have in creating value-added, will serve as springboards for the strategic innopreneurs.