Entrepreneurial firms in traditional industries. Does innovation matter for international growth?

This research analyzes the impact of innovation in the internationalization process of small-medium enterprises in traditional Italian industries. Particular attention is paid to the role played by the typologies and sources of innovation in export performance, in order to detect which innovation drivers mostly impact on the export activity of Italian traditional small-medium enterprises. An exploratory investigation followed by an inferential analysis based on a sample of small and medium enterprises is developed in this study. The analysis highlights the positive impact of design innovation for these firms in their internationalization process, while other typologies of innovation do not play a significant role. Among the sources of innovation, our findings highlight important differences with literature findings for other types of firms. For example, among external sources of innovation, both formal and informal partnerships are not significant. This is also holds for some internal sources, like research and development, which usually play a major role in other firms. The findings seem to suggest that small firms in traditional industries follow different innovation logics in relation to their international growth opportunities. © 2015, Springer Science+Business Media New York.