Collaborative Innovation of Spanish SMEs in the European Context: A Compared Study

This chapter aims to go in depth into the relationship between the SME and innovation, especially in collaboration with other organizations. After going through the principal findings in literature on the subject, the chapter compares data of the Spanish situation and its evolution with results of the European environment and obtains conclusions that allow us to make a solid diagnosis of the innovative and collaborative SME’s situation in our country in the European context. For this case, we use data from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) by Eurostat, for 2004 and 2012. In this sense it is noted that there has been a deterioration of innovation of the SMEs in Spain, when at the European level, companies have augmented their innovative activity, including the smallest ones. On the contrary, a general improvement in cooperation for innovation has been detected from 2004 to 2012 on the European level as well as the Spanish level. There are also interesting phenomena noted like the increasing collaboration with competitors with a decrease in perceived value of collaboration with providers.