With the advent of globalization and the knowledge-based economy, industrial SMEs must constantly innovate to remain competitive. Now, an important research issue in this regard concerns the role played by IT capabilities in enabling innovation processes such as new product development, and in determining the product innovation performance of these organizations. Using a configurational approach grounded in the resource-based view, contingency theory, and the notions of “fit” and equifinality, we argue that IT capabilities can be leveraged for innovation purposes to the extent that they are coaligned and thus constitute IT capability configurations. This paper presents the results of a survey of 588 Canadian industrial SMEs designed to further analyze this issue. Three IT capability configurations were thus empirically identified, that is, IT Defenders (n = 234), IT Analyzers (n = 91) and IT Prospectors (n = 263), the last two being associated to greater product innovation performance.

中文翻译：

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中小企业产品创新的IT能力：一种配置方法

随着全球化和知识型经济的到来，工业中小企业必须不断创新以保持竞争力。现在，这方面的一个重要研究问题涉及IT能力在实现创新过程（例如新产品开发）以及确定这些组织的产品创新绩效中所扮演的角色。使用基于资源的观点，权变理论以及“适合”和“均衡”概念的配置方法，我们认为IT能力可以在相互协调的范围内用于创新目的，从而构成IT能力配置。本文介绍了对588家加拿大工业中小企业的调查结果，旨在进一步分析这一问题。因此，根据经验确定了三种IT能力配置，即IT Defenders（n = 234），IT Analyzers（n = 91）和IT Prospectors（n = 263），最后两个与更高的产品创新性能相关。