MSMEs are responsible for more than two-thirds of all jobs globally and contribute significantly to economic growth and development. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, together with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their targets, was adopted by United Nations in 2015 to free humanity from poverty, secure a healthy and sustainable planet, and build peace and inclusive societies that promote prosperity and dignity for all. The United Nations has recognised the importance of encouraging the formalisation and growth of MSMEs in international, regional, and local markets, including complete access for all to capacity building and financial services. Likewise, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development duly underscored the important role of MSMEs in job creation and innovation for sustainable development in developing countries. The Addis Ababa Action Agenda also advocates for the concerted support of national governments, financial institutions, and development banks to support MSME growth by providing a conducive regulatory framework, innovative financing solutions, and systematic entrepreneurship training programmes
The challenges MSMEs face are poor infrastructure, inadequate financial instruments, technology knowledge gaps, lack of innovation, lack of proper skill and training, and inability to attract a qualified workforce. On the contrary, large enterprises have the financial capability to invest more in technology and training. They pay higher wages and provide better working conditions while leveraging economies of scale to gain cost leadership. Because of the relative disadvantage, MSMEs suffer from low-income generation and poor growth performance. MSMEs are caught in a vicious cycle of poor finances and lower productivity. The digitisation of industries has accentuated the intensity of this vicious cycle. There is a need to understand the functioning of various dimensions of problems faced by MSMEs to bridge the gap between the productivity and financial capabilities of large corporations and MSMEs. .
The problem of MSMEs has been recognised globally, and the nations have been strongly committed to their growth. Despite the constant efforts by global bodies such as the United Nations, World Bank, etc., the wave of digitisation accentuated by digital transformation has put immense stress on MSMEs. For example, the companies such as Uber and Ola have put many small rental service providers out of their business. There is a growing concern that MSMEs, the source of employment and livelihood for a large portion of the population, have not caught up to the speed of the current economy
Despite the disadvantages and vulnerability, MSMEs remain relevant in the economy because of their connections to the grassroots. MSME entrepreneurs come with in-depth knowledge of the demands of local communities. They possess the ability to take up inside-out innovations that can be transformed into sustainable development solutions. Their connections with the local communities make MSMEs the best option for rapid adoption and adaptation of digital innovations, thus allowing the extension of the principles of frugal innovation further to the current economy. Given the constraints that MSMEs face in this era of disruption and their continued relevance to sustainable development, IIM Amritsar announces the 2nd International Conference on Management of MSME with a theme of Fostering an Innovation Ecosystem to be held on 20th – 22nd January 2023 in Amritsar, Punjab. The conference will be a platform that will bring together policymakers, professionals, academicians, and researchers to share and discuss the knowledge and research ideas enabling MSMEs to take advantage of various emerging trends.
Businesses operate in a volatile and uncertain environment today. Innovation plays a key role in sustained value creation and value extraction. Innovation is as much a managerial and administrative problem as a technological one. Indeed, technological development contributes significantly to value creation. However, it takes more than mere excellence at design and production for technology to influence practice.
Innovation is a process. Like any other process, it needs appropriate planning and management. Innovation entails not only value creation through technological breakthroughs but also value capture through business models that take the new technology to the market. The two dimensions of innovations cannot be decoupled, and only through synergy between technological developments and adaption of business models can innovations be sustained.
An important but often missed aspect is that innovations are collective efforts. Gone are those days when we talk about an enterprising scientist sitting in the lab and developing a light bulb or telephone. Today’s innovations primarily result from collective efforts within organisations. Further, an increasing number of innovations are happening because of inter-organisational cooperation and coordination, especially in the supply chain. For example, coordination between Google, application developers, and the users of applications has led to the development of a myriad of mobile applications.
We are looking at a future where innovations result from ecosystems of loosely-coupled yet interdependent entities working in synergy to achieve common goals. These ecosystems are going to be fragile and need forces from within and outside to hold them together. Leadership within the ecosystems and regulatory mechanisms that foster the administration of these ecosystems will be critical in ensuring the sustainability of such collective efforts towards innovation.
Through this conference, we aim to bring out the various dimensions of the problems in innovation ecosystems, focusing on the role MSMEs could play in these ecosystems. While MSMEs lack resources, they are very agile. Cooperation with resource-rich entities such as corporates and governments can help these agile MSMEs spearhead a multitude of incremental yet critical innovations for the future. We hope to explore these dimensions further through this conference.
Key DatesSubmissions Close: 30th October 2022
Author Notification: 5th December 2022
Registration Starts: 1st November 2022
Early Bird Registration Ends: 25th December 2022
Conference Dates: 20th – 22nd January 2022
