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4 Results, evaluation of the studies and concluding remarks
rate. These results support the hypotheses that financial success and public
R&D funding affect the innovation activity (as measured by the generation
of IPRs) of growing SMEs. It was found that the lower the success, the
greater the probability of a firm being classified as an innovative growth
SME. This implies that innovative growing firms are probably less
successful than non-innovative growing SMEs. The observed direction of
the impact reflects the expected associations between innovation and high
variance in short-term revenue and profitability (Bhide, 2000; Freel and
Robson, 2004). The turnover/employee ratio correlated positively with
innovation, indicating that high ratios are associated with innovative high
growth SMEs. This is consistent with suggestions that rapidly growing
businesses with high productivity tend to be more IPR intensive than other
businesses (Coad and Rao, 2008). Public R&D funding was found to
increase the odds of a firm being classified as a growing innovative firm,
partly supporting the views of Santarelli and Piergiovanni (1996) that both
private and public R&D expenditures are positively correlated with product
innovation and the development of IPRs. However, the dependent variable
also contains a growth element, and the relationships of the two variables
with innovation cannot be separated.
The purpose of Article II was to address the following questions. What
factors are associated with simultaneous growth and success according to
selected statistical procedures (RA, LRA and DA)? Are the concepts of
growth and success surrogates? What problems are connected with
different methods of analysing HG and HS SMEs? In the RA-analysis two
independent regression models for growth and success were constructed.
The former showed that age, branch of industry, growth in the number of
personnel, innovativeness, location and profitability influenced the growth
of the firms. In the regression equation the sign of age is negative but since
the variable is logarithmic transformation the impact is positive. This
means that older firms are growing faster. Both innovation and urban area
location have positive influence on growth which presupposes better odds
ratios for firms in urban area being innovative growing ventures. This is
parallel with the assumptions of resource munificence and regional
competitiveness theories (Almus, 2002; Covin and Slevin, 1998, Keeble,
1997; Ritsilä, 1999). Branch of industry dummy (other industries=0 and
trade=1) and profitability factors have negative relationship with growth.
This result proposes that firms within trade sector as well as ventures with
higher profitability will have lower growth. Naturally the growth of the
personnel is associated with higher growth of the turnover.
The RA-model for success indicated that the number of auxiliary business
names, branch of industry growth in the number of personnel and
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