Design Thinking and Innovation strategy by SMEs for competitiveness: a review

Resumo

All over the world, SMEs are considered as a key part of the economic fabric. Once limited to their domestic markets, since the late 1990 ́s they have been exposed to a globalized marketplace, with more demanding customers and fierce competition. This exposure has become a significant challenge to SMEs, since most of them have limited resources and capabilities that frequently lack the ability to create and maintain a structured innovation management system. With this background, this paper performs a systematic literature review on the relationship between the Design Thinking, innovation and competitiveness in SMEs. 308 papers published between 1998 and 2021 were obtained after searching ISI Web of Science – Current Contents, and they were analysed using Endnote 20 and NVivo 20 from the bibliometric and content perspective. A final sample of 70 papers directly linked to the research question were obtained after applying all exclusion criteria. Results point to the need to develop an innovation framework for SMEs, integrating Design Thinking processes and aligned with corporate strategy.