Antecedents of innovativeness: Entrepreneurial team characteristics and networking

Abstract

This paper highlights the impact of entrepreneurial team demographics and networking on organizational innovativeness in a sample of SMEs located in northwest Turkey. The findings revealed that entrepreneurial team characteristics (age heterogeneity and average education) played a significant role in organizational innovativeness of SMEs after controlling team size. Networking with public organizations played an important role in contributing to innovativeness capacity whereas networking with competitors had a marginal role. The findings suggest substitutability between entrepreneurial team characteristics (average education) and networking which can offer more flexibility in the policies of public organizations and educational institutions.