Article Strategic Orientations and Innovation in Resource-constrained SMEs of an Emerging Economy Safal Batra 1 Sunil Sharma 2 Mukund R. Dixit 3 Neharika Vohra 4 Abstract While previous research has explored the linkages of strategic orien- tations and innovation for large businesses of developed economies, relatively little is known about these linkages for SMEs of emerging economies. To study these linkages, data were collected from owners or senior executives of 162 manufacturing SMEs in the Punjab region of India. Our results show that while customer orientation has been found to enable innovation for large firms, it does not directly facilitate innovation for Indian SMEs. The customer-oriented SMEs create suc- cessful innovation through better utilisation of their dynamic resources. Therefore, creation of dynamic resources by SMEs is more critical than that of unique resources for successful innovation. Implications of our findings are discussed for theory as well as practice. The Journal of Entrepreneurship 24(1) 17–36 © 2015 Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India SAGE Publications sagepub.in/home.nav DOI: 10.1177/0971355714560052 http://joe.sagepub.com 1 Assistant Professor, Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, India. 2 Associate Professor of Business Policy at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. 3 Professor of Business Policy at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. 4 Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. Corresponding author: Safal Batra, Institute of Management Technology, Raj Nagar, Ghaziabad 201 001, Uttar Pradesh, India. E-mail: safalb@iimahd.ernet.in by guest on August 28, 2016 joe.sagepub.com Downloaded from