Management of Innovations Through Communications in Bulgarian Small and Medium Enterprises

Abstract

In today's highly unpredictable business environment, any organization that wants to increase its competitiveness must innovate. Understanding the importance of innovation is determined by the corporate culture and communications of the organization. They broadcast its messages to all stakeholder groups, facilitate the transfer of knowledge and information and support innovation. The sample is based on the number of companies implementing innovations in Bulgaria. The methodology used is as follow: the profile of the surveyed companies is as follows: the number of respondents - 300 companies, and the owners and managers of the companies were interviewed. The closed-question survey is pre-prepared by the author . The data is collected from The National Statistical Institute in Bulgaria. The studied variables trace the relationship between the innovative efforts of the companies, the corporate culture-competitive performance link, with their internal and external communications and maintained partnerships in the context of open innovation. With the help of the Media Riches Theory and DART models, we could create effective communication programs to promote stakeholder innovation efforts and co-creation processes. The studied variables trace the relationship between the innovative efforts of the companies with their internal and external communications. The results show that small and medium-sized enterprises predominate in Bulgaria. Most managers understand the positive influence that corporate culture has on the overall competitive performance of companies. The studied companies maintain contact with the different groups of stakeholders. Part of this is keeping an effective communication policy, both inside and outside the "borders" of the organization. The significant investments of the investigated companies are in tangible resources. It is necessary to increase the understanding of the importance of intangible resources and increase the investment in them. Effective communication practices would be a reasonable basis for this.