The impact of intermediaries on innovation performance at small- and medium-sized enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta

In market economies, intermediaries help small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by providing them with valuable resources and information to facilitate their capacity building and innovation. The various roles of intermediaries have been analysed, yet the mechanism of their contribution to SMEs' growth is not clear in the current literature. This article attempts to analyse how intermediaries contribute to SMEs' innovation performance. Two types of cooperation with intermediaries are identified: information-based and resource-based. A theoretical framework of organizational learning is proposed to understand the impact of cooperation with intermediaries. An empirical study of SMEs in the Yangtze River Delta was conducted. The results showed that resource-based cooperation helps to improve innovation performance through both exploratory learning and exploitative learning, whereas information-based cooperation helps to improve innovation performance through exploratory learning.