Does provision of smart services depend on cooperation flexibility, innovation flexibility, innovation performance or business performance in SMEs?

Abstract

Many manufacturers provide a lot of accompanying services to their products. However, not all of them supply smart services, because the move towards these is not easy, especially for SMEs, which often struggle with a lack of money, insufficient digital technologies or unskilled employees. The aim of this paper is to find out if smart service provision depends on cooperation flexibility, innovation flexibility, innovation performance and business performance in SMEs. To fulfil the research aim, quantitative research was carried out among 112 Czech electrotechnical SMEs. The findings show that the higher the rating companies give to working with external customers, the less chance they have of providing smart services. Thus, SMEs who value cooperation flexibility with external customers as less important are more likely to provide smart services. The higher rating companies give to product innovation flexibility, the higher the chance for providing smart services. Thus, we can expect companies who value product innovation flexibility more highly to more likely deliver smart services.