Limitations of the Research

7.3.1 Research Strategy – the narrow industrial context

This research used organisations which had applied to be part of a B2B innovation voucher scheme for businesses based in the North-West of England. Though the programme was open to all businesses in the area which met the definition of ‘SME’, predominantly those who applied were very small and micro-firms. Secondly, the innovation voucher

programme was designed to encourage linkages between SMEs and businesses in the creative industries. As such, all the innovation partnerships which took place here involved one non-creative business and one business from the creative industries.

7.3.2 Sample size

The sample size for dyads at the organisational level provided 121 observations on which we were able to apply regression analysis. However, the sample group of pairings at the individual level was much smaller, with, in the end, just 39 matched from the

82questionnaires returned. As such it was necessary to use a more practical approach to analyse differences. Whilst the approach remains robust, the size of the sample group potentially impacts on the quality of the findings and the ability to effectively answer the individual-level research question.

7.3.3 The nature of the limitations

This research took place in a very specific context where small businesses were

encouraged to use a supplier in the creative industries to work on an innovation project. Research shows that creative innovation services can help overcome behavioural failures

associated with innovation (Potts and Morrison, 2009), particularly around working with novelty. Firms in the creative industries have long been practiced at working in

environments which create and appropriate returns from that novelty on a routine basis. These innovation capabilities are not easily codified or packaged and therefore often require one-to-one engagement to be successfully transferred (Potts and Morrison, 2009). Part of the innovation services that creative industries can provide is in the provision of models and tools to aid imagination and creativity which help customers imagine new possibilities and opportunities. They do this by using simulation and visualisation techniques. This helps firms and consumers to more clearly imagine different futures, while the creative firm carefully calibrates acceptable differences (Nooteboomet al, 2006). Creative firms further aid their customers or users by displaying, in the form of business models and working practices, new models of different behaviours and practices which through customer imitation trigger reflection that may lead to changed behaviours (Earl and Potts, 2004; Lanham, 2006). Businesses in the creative industries are much closer to the 5G innovation model than earlier innovation generations; the work is often modular and project-driven and more naturally based on open-innovation and flexible business models (Caves, 2000; Von Hippel, 2005; Eikhof and Haunschild, 2006). This is highlighted as a limitation of the research as these creative industry core- competencies may have combined to create the right conditions which more readily support the hypothesis of cognitive-distance. This means, until further studies are conducted using small business partnerships in other industries, the findings here may be consequential of this type of very particular innovation partnership.

In terms of the sample size, at the individual level of analysis it was only possible to create 39 pairings of data out of the 82SOVquestionnaires that were returned. This is a

responses from both parties in the dyad. This limited the ability to fully test the concept of cognitive-distance at the individual level and also restricted the type of analysis that could be conducted. An independentt-test allowed us to compare the difference in means between the low, med and high-similarity groups, but not to look at relationships between variables as a regression analysis would have allowed. However, the method allowed the research to at least investigate if the expected signs on the coefficients for each group were produced.

7.3.4 How the limitations might be overcome

The key to overcoming the first limitation would be to extend this methodology to small business partnerships which did not involve firms from the creative industries. This would allow us to retest the similarity measures at both levels of analysis and particularly to investigate whether the aesthetic dimension produced a similar result or whether this was, indeed, a factor specific to the creative-industry context. In terms of increasing the sample size, I would recommend that a more careful positioning of the value of the approach and content of the Study of Values and a stronger argument for the link to innovation may encourage a larger number of participants.

Though a positivist approach is less likely to suffer from the subjectivity that can be found in the interpretive methods associated with qualitative research, it cannot be fully ruled out that bias and preconceptions are factors which inevitably influence a researchers work at least to some degree, but being aware of that vagary at least allows one to be on guard against one’s own epistemological and ontological idiosyncrasies. Although techniques were used to avoid bias and preconceptions, it cannot be guaranteed that another researcher using the same methodology would report exactly the same observations.