Innovation in tradition: how entrepreneurs innovate in creative crafts microfirms

Despite the relevance held by micro-firms for the European and the world’s economy, we still know very little about how these firms innovate. This paper aims to contribute to the paucity of studies on this topic by taking into consideration the peculiarity of micro-firms vis-à-vis others small and medium-sized enterprises, the relevance that the micro-entrepreneur has in determining innovation dynamics and the importance given to tradition in this context. Building on innovation and organizational paradoxes literature, this qualitative study answers to the need of knowing more about how micro-entrepreneurs decide to innovate in order to keep their firms up-to-date and understanding if and how tradition plays a role in these choices. The study is based on 22 semi-structured interviews with Italian micro-entrepreneurs active in the creative crafts sector and offers three main contributions: first, it identifies different ways with which micro-entrepreneurs experience tradition and clarifies how this difference impacts on innovation; second, it proposes three different approaches to the act of innovate in a traditional context (i.e. defensive, swinging and engaged innovators); third, it suggests that micro-entrepreneurs approach to innovation in tradition can change over time and consequently three different patterns emerge as shown by our ‘Innovation in tradition’ dynamic framework