Innovation Policy and Environmental Sustainability as Strategic Tools for Reaching Higher Performances. A Regional Empirical Analysis to Find the Best Practice

Despite the sector or the firm’s size, the choice of the strategies is worth; it is about a set of different aspects included by firms into their own strategic and operating procedures as corporate culture, strategic human resources management, empowerment, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, environmental issues focusing on product innovations and advanced technological processes. The general aim of this study is to analyze how Piedmont (North-West Italy) SMEs are facing the challenges and changes that are happening into the business environment and what kind of strategies and tools they exploit to become more responsible, sustainable and competitive in order to create value for themselves and their stakeholders and to compete at a global stage. Moreover, the paper is focused on setting up a rulebook for family business SMEs in which are specified suggestions about overcoming the crisis and achieving long terms goals