- Title
- Innovation as the influential competitive advantage towards SMEs of IT industry in Hong Kong
- Creator
- Chow, Koon Man Hans
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Professional Doctorate - Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)
- Description
- During the last decade, business world with increasing globalization, high velocity change, shorter product life cycles, mass customization and narrowing customer niches presents serious challenges to organizations, especially to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), ability to maintain their competitiveness (Hitt et al, 1998 and Fowler et al., 2000). Thus, in today’s economic uncertainty and turbulence, competition is getting even more dynamic. However, the introduction and implementation of innovation can bring influential impact onto SMEs’ competitiveness. This research study investigates how the introduction and implementation of innovation to the IT industry in Hong Kong can bring and reinforce their competitive advantage. Innovation can act as the influential competitive advantage to SMEs of the industry in Hong Kong. The research study has a twofold objective: The first is to make a contribution to the field of management studies. The researcher starts to draw a better understanding of innovation and its role towards the SMEs’ competitiveness in the IT industry in Hong Kong. Then, a wider understanding towards characteristics of SMEs, as well as their resistance to the introduction and implementation of innovation, will be considered. The second, which has more pragmatic aim, is to find a way to enhance the SMEs’ competitiveness via the introduction and implementation of innovation to help their business owners and/or decision-makers to improve their business practices and decisions in creating their own competitive advantage. This research study will end to offer an innovation – competitive advantage (ICA) paradigmatic model. This research study was conducted through quantitative research methodology via survey-based approach, in which a range of academic and practitioner literature relating to the introduction and implementation of innovation, competitive advantage, as well as the characteristics of SMEs were reviewed. Overall, the findings point towards five implications. The findings conclude that the introduction and implementation of innovation are critical to gaining and reinforcing a stronger competitive advantage for SMEs of the IT industry in Hong Kong. The financial resourcing and innovation recognition towards the introduction and implementation of innovation by SMEs’ business owners and/or decision-makers of the IT industry in Hong Kong are two important elements affecting their competitiveness. More financial resources and innovation recognition by business owners and/or decision-makers can bring in better and stronger competitive advantage in Hong Kong. With the introduction and implementation of innovation in ways of product differentiation, process optimization, sourcing improvement, and distribution innovation, the researcher finds that the SMEs can gain stronger competitiveness in one or more aspects of quality, cost, time, and flexibility. Based on the findings, the researcher created the Innovation-Competitive Advantage (ICA) model, a novel model that presents, maps, and explains the relationship between innovation and competitive advantage. This ICA model can be used to help any SMEs to determine their introduction and implementation of innovation strategies. Lastly, without the ICA model, it will be very difficult for the SMEs to succeed and create competitive advantage and consequently to win in business performance and profit.
- Subject
- innovation; competitive advantage; ICA model; SME; Hong Kong
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1399959
- Identifier
- uon:34710
- Rights
- Copyright 2019 Koon Man Hans Chow
- Language
- eng
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 867 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |