Guest editorial: Reinterpreting competitive strategies in turbulent scenarios

ABSTRACT

[...]business strategies, ever more oriented to shared values (Porter and Kramer, 2019), must take into huge consideration structures, behaviours, resources and knowledge emerging from the economic, human, and territorial milieu (Festa et al., 2020). Highlighting its research interest on analysing, planning, implementing and controlling the generation of sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) through innovation, this special issue has asked for research that would have been constructed as business oriented, theoretically solid and practically usable, involving scientific papers adopting qualitative and quantitative methodologies, with a strong focus on competitive strategies for building innovation, sustainability and long-range competition. The results of this research confirm that strategic competitive innovation is a key source for financial performance of SMEs during such periods. [...]if SMEs are looking to grow and survive, they must be very dynamic and must implement a suitable innovation culture. Marketing innovation and process innovation have a positive and significant effect on the financial performance of SMEs, whereas organisational innovation and product innovation have no impact on the financial performance of SMEs. [...]it is deduced that the higher the support of SMEs to renewing marketing and processes practices, the more the levels of financial resistance and performance that are attained.