SMEs in data-driven era: the role of data to firm performance

Euromed 2016: “SMEs in data-driven era: the role of data to firm performance”

Members of the Laboratory e-Bi Lab participated in writing the research paper SMEs in data-driven era: the role of data to firm performance, which was presented at the 9th International Conference EUROMED ACADEMY OF BUSINESS (ΕΜΑΒ) 2016 with subject “Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Digital Ecosystems”, which was held in Digital Economy Lab (DELab) of the University of Warsaw in Poland on 14-16 September 2016.

Nowadays, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) face an extremely competitive, globalized, technological changing and “knowledge-based” environment. Knowledge management and exploitation play a crucial role to innovation and competitiveness of enterprises. Digital technology has transformed the rules of innovation and performance in enterprises, since 90% of the worldwide data today was generated in just the last 2 years and that datafication is growing rapidly, while connected devices and sensors through “Internet of Things” are increasing (50 billion smart connected devices globally by 2020). As digital data are everywhere, in every sector and economy, big data is described as an asset for enterprises’ innovation, providing knowledge about processes, customers, human capital and technology necessary for enterprise.

Big data is a major resource for enterprises valuable knowledge to enterprises added value contribute to increased competitiveness and innovation. The leverage of big data provide enterprises not only in ICT sector, valuable knowledge leading on competitive advantage against rivals in terms of productivity, resources allocation and efficient marketing. In addition, data-driven innovation provides the ability to improve or foster new products/services, processes, organizational methods and markets.
There is evidence about positive impact of data-driven approach to firm performance, however it is limited to large enterprises. The purpose of this study is to present evidence about the impact of big data in SMEs’ performance and data-driven approach in innovative activity (data-driven innovation) of Greek SMEs, taking in account the economic turbulence of the recent years.

Keywords: data, SMEs, performance, knowledge, competitiveness

Authors: Ioannis KopanakisKonstantinos Vassakis and George Mastorakis

Ioannis Kopanakis, Konstantinos Vassakis & George Mastorakis. “SMEs in data-driven era: the role of data to firm performance”. Presentation at 9th Annual EUROMED ACADEMY OF BUSINESS (ΕΜΑΒ) CONFERENCE  “Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Digital Ecosystems”, 14-16 September 2016, Warsaw, Poland