Knowledge management and learning for innovation in smes

Knowledge is commonly considered the key ingredient of innovation, and hence the effectiveness of innovation activities depends on how companies manage their learning processes. This requires that companies fill their “knowledge gaps” and reduce uncertainty regarding various innovation-related issues about technical, economic, and market aspects. Especially in the case of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), there is evidence that companies go through learning processes and manage innovation-related knowledge, but this is often done in an informal and substantially “unconscious” way. In particular, the adoption and use of systematic knowledge management (KM) practices for collecting, creating, and exploiting useful knowledge is scarcely diffused among SMEs. This topic deserves further investigation, considering that those companies are an essential part of the economy. By investigating a sample of 12 cases of innovative projects in SMEs, this study examines the critical KM issues in innovation implementation. The goals are: a) to detect and categorize the need of companies to fill their knowledge gaps in relation to the various elements and activities that are involved in the innovation process; b) to examine what KM practices are adopted and the success or limits of these practices; and c) to investigate whether and how systematic KM approaches are or can be used to effectively perform these learning processes, and the possible problems in their adoption. The study contributes to the literature about KM in SMEs, especially in relation to innovation. From a practical point of view, it offers food for thought to SME managers about the key role played by knowledge in the innovation processes and about how to better manage it.