Business Expansion Strategies on Indigenous Innovation Commercialisation of Small Indigene Firms: An Emerging Economy Perspective

Indigene entrepreneurship literature has investigated the effects of different business expansion strategies (e.g. human resourcing strategies, marketing strategies and value proposition strategies) on the innovation commercialisation of indigene firms. Despite this increasing interest of entrepreneurship scholarship, it remains unclear which configurations of these strategies coalesce and give effect to germane indigenous commercialisation outcomes in emerging economies contexts. Moreover, whether and the extent to which business performance of indigene firms varies across their commercialised innovations, remains grey area. To address this knowledge gap, the current study drew on empirical data extracted from 306 small indigene businesses operating in different locations in Johannesburg (South Africa). The AMOS results suggest that while human resourcing and value proposition strategies exerted a positive and significant effect on the commercialisation of indigenous innovations, marketing strategies had no statistically significant effect on the commercialisation of such innovations. While revenue, profitability and employment scores (as business performance dimensions) varied significantly in relation to indigenous innovation commercialisation, some year-on-year sales growth scores did not differ significantly in relation to the commercialisation of indigenous innovations. The study presents important theoretical and practical implications for improving sale growth of indigene firms by leveraging the commercialisation of innovations in resource-poor contexts.