Bhumika Gupta, Jeayaram Subramanian. Innovation performance in the small and medium enterprises of India – evidence from the food processing industry. Emerging Asian economies and MNCs strategies, Edward Elgar Publishing, pp.199 – 215, 2016, New Horizons in International Business series, 978-1-78536-405-1. ⟨10.4337/9781785364068.00019⟩.

The Indian food processing industry is one of the largest in the world in terms of production, consumption, exports and growth opportunities. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a crucial role in this. Large manufacturing firms mainly dominate innovation studies in India. This paper sets out to answer the important question as to how SMEs manage innovation, given their limitations in resources and what are the factors which affectinnovation performance, given the resource constraint. To get a meaningful answer to the research question, this study considers the case of a medium enterprise in the south Indian state of Kerala called “Canning Industries – Cochin”. The study results identify 7 major factors that affect innovation performance, namely technology, labor market, financial resources, top management commitment and customer and supplier relationships.