The Role of Knowledge Management Practices in Sustaining Innovation in SMEs of North India

The Industrial Age has been replaced by the Knowledge Age. It is a time when strategic management of knowledge and resources is a critical success factor for the organizations. Good Knowledge Management (KM) practices can equip the organizations to be more innovative and provide better integration and sharing of knowledge, which is the basis for starting new organizations or revitalizing mature organizations. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), the backbone of the economy, significantly benefit from KM practices. This study examines the KM practices followed by the SMEs of north India and tries to find out the reasons for adopting KM practices and their impact on their innovation practices. Using the literature review, this paper has developed a KM instrument and tested a conceptual model linking KM and innovation using regression analysis and structural equation modeling technique. The primary data was collected from SMEs of three industries, i.e., Software, Pharmaceuticals and Textiles, of north India. The study confirms the relationship between adoption of KM practices and innovation strategies in the selected SMEs