La innovación tecnológica como factor de competitividad en las pequeñas y medianas empresas manufactureras del cantón Ambato.

Abstract

Despite the undeniable importance that technology has now acquired as a tool for business development, Ecuador still shows low levels of technological innovation in corporate world, mainly in small and medium enterprises which, either by lack of knowledge or economic reasons, are deprived of the benefits from the acquisition of that kind of technologies. In that context, this thesis entitled "Technological Innovation as a key factor of competitiveness in small and medium manufacturing enterprises in the city of Ambato" aims to analyze this scarcely studied topic, being its main purpose to define the incidence of technological innovation on the competitiveness of Small and Medium Enterprises from Ambato, in order to develop strategies to strengthen the local productive sector. To achieve this objective, the applied methodology consisted in the implementation of both a desk study and a fieldwork, which included the application of direct surveys to a selected group of SMEs chosen by a random sampling by conglomerates. Thanks to this, it was possible to get first-hand information of the current reality in these institutions, especially of aspects related to their competitiveness and technological innovation levels. In fact, with the collected information, it was possible to do a detailed analysis that allowed obtaining accurate results about the problem in study and proposing alternative solutions. In this way, besides verifying the proposed hypothesis: the unquestionable relation between the technological innovation and competitive business development; the investigation also generated conclusions and recommendations that facilitated the design of strategies to increase the levels of technological innovation on SMEs as a means to improve their competitiveness and promote the local economic development.