Earlier today, I participated in a workshop sponsored by Intuit and Emergent Research, the authors of the Future of Small Business Report, “Defining Small Business Innovation.” Steve King and Carolyn Ockels of Emergent Research define innovation more broadly than many policymakers and academics. To them, more small businesses are innovators than even the owners might admit to. When they interviewed small business owners, many of them said that they did not innovate, but then they went on to describe various tweaks and processes that they had come up with to improve their firm or to better compete. Indeed, they were innovators (even if they did not know or want to admit it).

Part of the challege of promoting such innovative capacity is how to measure it. From a researcher’s perspective, innovative tweaks are harder to quantify, but that should not diminish their importance. Another challenge is changing perceptions of what an innovation is. When you mention innovation, most people think of technology, for instance. As a result, policies that might enable such innovation are different than might be prescribed for a much broader definition. 

I look forward to reading future reports, some of which will stem out of the discussion today, on this topic from Intuit as part of their series. Good job so far.