dissertation in pdf-format - Aalto-yliopisto

Developing innovation support services 409
providing new opportunities for wealth creation, opportunities to foster rapidly growing
businesses and the creation of new jobs in the contemporary and future Finnish economy.
In addition, the results show that the shift to service-provided business opportunities has
not been solely service sector-based, but other branches of industry have also utilised new
service-based opportunities. However, our study confirms that the prospects of rapid
growth and success were better for service (including KIBS) sector firms than for other
firms in other branches of industry during the period 2002 to 2005 in both rural and urban
(Capital) Finnish areas. Further, the LR-analysis proved capable of correctly classifying
ca. 2/3 of individual case firms, both firms included in the model development and the
cross-validation set. However, it should be noted that in logistic regression modelling it is
always possible to achieve at least 50% accuracy by simply setting the prediction for each
observation to respond to the most frequent outcome (Hoetker, 2007). Nevertheless, our
model provided sufficient classification power to evaluate possible growth of firms, and
discriminate successful firms from diverse branches of industry in a systematic manner.
During the study period, the Finnish government also strongly fostered growth of the
service sector, especially KIBS, by granting large amounts of R&D funding. In practise,
this kind of action has increased the innovativeness of this branch of industry, the
frequency of new ventures, new jobs and new tax flow sources in rural and urban areas.
However, it is important for the policy-makers to be able to recognise high growth firms
or potential high growth firms located in the region, to recognise the special needs of high
growth firms and be aware of measures that could deliver support for them, if needed. In
addition, staff and managers of high growth firms should consider strategies and actions
required to manage business growth in order to be profitable and competitive during
growth periods and maintain business sustainability in intervening periods. Overall,
business change seems to be highly incremental according to the innovation activities of
the firms, especially since imitation seems to be the main competitive strategy of KIBS
firms. Small high growth firms located in rural areas should continuously look for new
business opportunities from their contextual perspective and new ways to commercialise
their products and services, irrespective of their distance from markets, by using (for
example) ecommerce opportunities. Further, even though small high growth firms have
resource constraints they should not rely too heavily on expectations of continuous
governmental support. They have to use broader business strategies and actions, for
example by exploiting open innovation systems.
5.1 Policy and managerial implications
From a managerial perspective the study identifies several factors that can be used to
support and develop the commercialisation process in high growth small technology
firms. The results indicate that entrepreneurs recognise that commercialisation is a vital,
integral part of their business. Thus, an appropriate business model needs to become part
of the new dominant logic for managing commercialisation (Chesbrough and
Rosenbloom, 2002) and more attention should be paid to market-orientation during
commercialisation to help firms to estimate the market potential of their products and to
acquire information regarding their customers’ requirements. In addition, greater
awareness of the key role distributors and resellers play in bringing new products to the
market is required. In the small technology firm context these issues should be
understood as key disciplines in the commercialisation process. The study also shows that
maintaining an appropriate balance between market-related and technology-related