This paper aims to understand the role of innovativeness in ensuring the sustained performance of entrepreneurial enterprises. The paper is set in the high technology industry and focuses on the Indian small and medium sized enterprises engaged in software development. Based on the options of growth available to firms in the software sector, the paper sets out to present a model of evolution for indicating the stages of firms' growth vis-à-vis its innovative capability.
The innovation capability of the firm is being represented by an ‘index of innovativeness’ which is derived from data on measures of firm innovativeness collected through a questionnaire survey of 244 software firms across India. The dimensions of technological growth adopted in this research are concerned with performing technologically more complex tasks by means of (i) moving up the software value ladder and/or (ii) by entering new industry sectors. The model and index can be utilised for further studies on high technology firms.
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