THE INFLUENCE OF THE MANAGEMENT OF INFORMATION SOURCES ON THE INNOVATION PERFORMANCE OF LARGE AND SMALL BUSINESSES

This paper is part of a broader empirical research study about Brazilian industrial firms with innovative characteristics. The study involved more than 70 enterprises in the sample. Its aim was to provide inferences on the relationships between the management of sources of technological information and the innovation performance of the firms studied. In this paper, an analysis compares larger and smaller enterprise and identifies what the differences are between them. The analysis of the data suggests there are associations between many of the indicators of the management of sources of technological information, and the indicators of innovation performance studied. Approximately 100 significant relationships were found and many of them differ between larger and smaller enterprises.