Innovation Offshoring by Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises – Establishing the Research Gap

Research on innovation offshoring (IO) has increased substantially over the last decade. IO is (still) widely regarded as the domain of multinational enterprises. Even though more and more researchers are claiming that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) also practise IO, so far, the particularities of SMEs have been widely neglected. This is unfortunate, since a small business is not a little big business and thus most of the IO research lacks generalizability to SMEs. This study uncovers the gap and extends the empirical evidence available from scientific publications, obtaining a more current and accurate picture of IO research on SMEs. We directly approached academic experts through an online survey to collect information regarding the specific characteristics of SMEs relevant for IO, managerial needs arising from those characteristics and theoretical approaches appropriate to framing SME-specific IO research. This study provides a toolkit and roadmap for subsequent IO research aimed at SMEs.