Innovation has been defined as Innovation has been studied at various levels: macro, micro (or company) and project level (Goffin and Pfeiffer, 1999). According to Gopalakrishnan and Damanpour (1997) there is no generally accepted definition of innovation. They declare that researchers within each field conceptualize innovation differently, and have differing views of the impact they can? have? on? a? firm’s productivity, growth, survival and performance. However, they emphasis that the criteria used to conceptualize innovation in various disciplines are not entirely independent of each other. Urabe (1988) states that innovation is the generation of a new idea and its implementation into a new product, process, or service. Afuah (2003) says that innovation is the employment of newly acquired knowledge which then provides a new product or service that customers want; this can be simplified to invention and commercialization. This study sought to establish the influence of innovation on growth of women micro business in Bugesera District. Specifically, the study sought to: assess the influence of innovation on growth of women micro business. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. The target population of this study comprised of all registered women micro businesses by the district authorities as at 01st January 2017 that have been in operation with a focus on the women micro businesses. Primary data was collected by structured questionnaires. Secondary data was collected from district documents and relevant publications in referred journals. The collected data was edited, coded and entered into SPSS software for analysis. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. In particular, Regression Analysis was used to investigate the relationships between hypothesized variables. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was also used to investigate whether independent variables had combined effect on the dependent variable.
The findings were presented using figures and tables. The study found out that the study showed that innovation was key to making better innovative decisions which were assessed by managers’ creativity strategy and their ability to new ideas which can be acquired through training. The study however established that, innovation had significant and positive influence on women micro businesses in Bugesera District. This study is envisaged to aid in the development of policy documents to grow women micro business in Rwanda.
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In-Text Citation: (Kamanzi, Namusonge, & Eugene, 2018)
To Cite this Article: Kamanzi, J., Namusonge, G. S., & Eugene, N. (2018). Influence of Innovation on Growth of Women Micro Businesses in Bugesera District. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 8(1), 24–42.
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