What makes an Innovative SME in the Netherlands?

This work empirically examines which KEYS to creativity (Amabile et al., 1996) in organizational culture and climate, leadership style, resources and skills and barriers to organizational creativity could be considered as the driving force behind the innovative capacity of SMEs in the Netherlands. By using a logit model to paint an initial portrait of 60 innovative Dutch SMEs as compared to 60 non or less innovative counterparts, this study hopes to aid to the complex puzzle why some firms are more innovative than others. This research tries to find answers to the aforementioned question by digging deeper into the complementary relationship between organizational creativity and innovation and proposes a conceptual framework by which the innovativeness of Dutch SMEs is determined by the higher levels of organizational creativity within the work environment. The logistic regression models indicate that the innovative Dutch SMEs are distinguishing themselves by their organizational encouragement to creativity, freedom and challenge in the arena of organizational culture and climate and supervisory encouragement as an important facet of their leadership style.