Assessing a Micro and Small Businesses Innovation Support Programme in Brazil: The Local Innovation Agents Programme

Abstract

Created by the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (SEBRAE) and developed in partnership with the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), the local innovation agents (LIA) programme aims to convey innovation to Brazilian micro and small businesses (MSBs) and has covered around 150 000 MSBs since 2008. Notwithstanding, assessments of the LIA programme are still limited. Therefore, this paper aims to assess the impact of the LIA programme based on a sample of over 6000 MSBs. Results show that all dimensions improved to some extent, but marketing and organizational‐related innovations improved more than product and process‐related ones. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The local innovation agents program: a literature review on the largest Brazilian small business innovation support program

“…R1 was significantly higher than R0 in the Brazilian federal units (Z = À4.545;p < 0.001). This result corroborates and furthers previous studies that mainly found significant improvements in specific regions or implementation periods (Benevides et al, 2019;Campelo Filho, 2015;Cardoso et al, 2020;Carvalho et al, 2018;David et al, 2017;Paredes et al, 2015).…”

“…A 13th innovation dimension, the innovative environment, was added to assess a favorable internal environment to innovation. Thus, 13 dimensions compose the MSBs innovation radar: offerings, platform, solution, customers, customer experience, value capture, processes, organization, supply chain, presence, networking, brand and innovative environment (Bachmann, 2009;Carvalho et al, 2018;Carvalho et al, 2015a;Paredes et al, 2014).…”

“…It is noteworthy that previous research has already classified innovation radar dimensions into the types of innovation recommended by Oslo Manual third edition (OECD and Eurostat, 2005), that is, product, process, marketing or organizational (Carvalho et al, 2018;Paredes et al, 2014). As Table 1 presents, it is possible to extend this classification to the types and subtypes of innovation described in the fourth edition of the Oslo Manual, which discusses the equivalences and changes between the last editions (OECD andEurostat, 2005, 2018).…”

“…Based on a sample of more than 6,000 Brazilian MSBs and by means of the Wilcoxon signed posts test, Carvalho et al (2018) analyzed the evolution of the innovation radar dimensions over the ALI Program. In general, the results revealed that all dimensions improved significantly to some extent, but the dimensions that most increased on the scale in terms of scores were related to marketing and organizational innovations as opposed to product or process innovations.…”

Innovativeness and coopetition in tourism SMEs: comparing two coopetitive networks in Brazil

“…According to Carvalho et al (2017), there are two main approaches concerning companies' innovativeness. The former considers as innovative firms those that introduced innovation in recent years, thus focusing on innovation outputs or proxies such as patents (Calza et al , 2019; Carvalho et al , 2018; Keil et al , 2008). The latter considers innovativeness as a propensity to innovate or a set of capabilities that support companies' innovation such as creativity, strategy, knowledge, network and risk management (Forsman, 2011).…”