Innovative Face of Organizations

Innovation is widely recognized as needful requirement to compete in the current business environment for all organizations, irrespective of their size. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are considered the “life blood” of modern economies and their key role of in the current globalized context is widely recognized. Governments worldwide rely, to a large extent, on their local SMEs and place much emphasis on developing support capabilities to successfully compete against their larger rivals. Because of the increasing importance of this topic, for both researchers and practitioners, this paper intends to outline a picture of the major studies revolving around it and to identify a model that supporting the understanding and the adoption of the innovation process in small and medium enterprises. The first half of the paper is dedicated to the analysis of the concept of innovative organization, with special attention paid to the main critical success factors that can actually have an impact on a company’s innovative dimension. The second part of the paper gives an in-depth description of a model of reference that can suitably support the analysis and development of the innovation process in small and medium enterprises.