Most small businesses don’t even want to innovate.
Robert Atkinson & Michael Lind 18, Mr. Atkinson is the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Mr. Lind is a visiting professor at the University of Texas Johnson School of Public Affairs, “The Myth of the Genius in the Garage: Big Innovation,” Big Is Beautiful: Debunking the Myth of Small Business, MIT Press, 2018, pp 127-153
In conclusion, it should be no surprise that despite the publicity that rewards the rare successful tech startup, most small businesses are not innovative. Few of them want to be. In a 2011 study, Erik Hurst and Benjamin Wild Pugsley found that most small businesses do not intend to grow or innovate.77 Most small business owners cited nonpecuniary reasons, such as being their own bosses or having flexible schedules, as their motives for starting a company; only 41 percent had a new business idea or sought to create a new product.78 Only 15 percent of new businesses surveyed planned “to develop proprietary technology, processes, or procedures in the future.”79 This is not to say that tech startups and small R&D-intensive firms are not important to driving innovation, but to privilege small over large when it comes to innovation is a fundamental mistake.