Cooperação interorganizacional e inovação nas micro e pequenas empresas do Rio Grande do Sul : um estudo qualitativo

Abstract

Micro and small enterprises play a key role in employment and proceeds generation houwas. For this reason, they can be qualified as promotional tools for economic development. Inserted into competitive and globalized markets, micro and small business are increasing their reliance on technological training and generating innovations to ensure their survival and success. This study aims make a qualitative analysis of interorganizational cooperation and innovation in micro and small companies in Rio Grande do Sul based on the understandings of academic experts, professionals of the area and company managers. The theoretical perspective of the paper includes studies on inter-organizational cooperation and innovation into the context of micro and small enterprises. According to the results of this paper, cooperative relations among the companies facilitates the conduction of joint actions and resource transactions to achieve organizational goals and solutions of the needs for micro and small enterprises. In most of the researched categories, academic experts and entrepreneurs slightly differ in their opinions. Nevertheless, their views complement each other since academics are within universities, the professionals are within professional associations and entrepreneurs are the managers of cooperation and innovation processes. Agencies as FINEP, CNPq, SEBRAE, which sponsor innovation in Brazil are considered by most of the entrepreneurs as the main external positive factors. Flexibility is a very important feature in micro and small enterprises for innovation processes and the development agencies, mainly to obtain the resources for innovation and cooperation themselves. So innovation requires cooperation, which can be built among micro and small enterprises, since it is crucial that these companies are prepared to face the changes and transformations required on the process, thereby strengthening their response capabilities to these business challenges. Therefore, micro and small enterprises need to adopt business cooperation and its relationships, which can be a basic mechanism for small businesses to be competitive and survive in the future.