The innovation-internationalization binomium and its relation with the strategy of the innovative companies located in Andalusia.

Abstract

From nineties onwards, Andalusia starts to operate in the process of internationalization, considering this as a growth strategy for the international geographic diversification that affects the different activities in the value chain and the organizational structure of the enterprise. Hand in hand, the technological innovation also has known a dynamic phase that is the result of the progressive implementation of new technologies and the use of innovative and non-innovative technologies, producing changes in the managing procedures and introducing Andalusia in the public service economy and industrial one. Up to now, the investigations has not been able to demonstrate adequately that there are connections between innovation and internationalization. This article has as main purposes, on the one hand, the study of the innovative process features of the enterprises located in Andalusia considering the internalization criteria chosen by the enterprises (direct foreign investment, agreements, cooperation, direct and indirect exports) and, in the other hand, to delimit the main features of the strategy taken by these enterprises as far as activities in of R+D and innovation are concerned. In this sense, we have noticed several variables that can help us to define the strategies (innovative and technological) with a group of 175 innovative enterprises in Andalusia (from a sample of 263) with both the factorial analysis techniques and the cluster one. Thus, the taxonomy of the enterprise has been defined considering tree groups of variables (innovation, strategy and internationalization) to study the connections between all of them and to be able to conclude that there is a positive connection in the innovative process and the internationalization one, that both processes are hierarchical and grow in the same direction as a result of the strategy introduced. Finally, we study the location of these innovative and international enterprises to deduce if medium-sized cities have a significant role in all these processes.