TECHNICAL INNOVATION AND PERFORMANCE OF MICRO SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN BAYELSA STATE NIGERIA

The study examined the relationship between technical innovation and performance of small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. Specifically, the objectives sought to examine how the dimensions of technical innovation (product, process and market innovation) relate to SMEs performance. The research design adopted in this study was survey research approach and the sample size for the study consists of 218 registered small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs). However, stratified sampling procedure was used to select these SMEs from the target population to participate in the study and the collected data was analyzed using multiple regression. The result of the bivariate relationship revealed that product innovation is a strong predictor of MSMEs performance in Bayelsa State. This significant correlation stems from the fact that product innovation gives credence to customer satisfaction, increased market share, higher sales, and improved competitiveness among SMEs in Bayelsa State. Furthermore, process innovation was found to negatively correlate SMEs performance in Bayelsa State. Though, negative but the correlation was significant thus, implies that implementing cutting edge technologies alone can actually undermine sales performance, possibly due to high setup of SMEs in Bayelsa State. The paper concluded that technical innovation is a predictor of performance. It recommended that SMEs should conduct a thorough cost-benefit analysis before investing in technical innovation as it will generate better and viable inducement for innovation activities on in their firms.