Operational Criteria Evaluation for Collaboration of Innovative SMEs

SMEs should organize alliances with universities or other research organizations, global business companies, and other SMEs. Each type of alliance has specific risk and success criteria to be studied. SMEs need to construct successful alliances in order to have sustainable business in a competitive environment. Pre-analysis of the path for successful alliances will lead to improvements in innovative power. This study attempts to perform qualitative analysis of the SME alliances in order to express the criteria supporting the success in innovation. In this empirical study, the survey results will be extracted by literature taxonomy to categorize criteria of innovation success. These results will be analyzed by the Analytic Hierarchy Process to prioritize the innovation criteria to help any SME or large business to reduce risks in future alliances. This study will allow structuring strategic decisions based on operational criteria.