The project aims to discriminate between innovative manufacturing SMEs and similar but non-innovative ones exploiting the HTML tags used on their corporate websites.

In a contribution published in the Proceedings of the GoodIT ’22 Conference,¹ we explore the possibility of employing the source code of corporate websites as an information source for research in innovation studies. Therefore, HTML-based indicators help build real-time, granular measures for innovation policy. In particular, such kinds of indicators are suited for cross-country and temporal comparisons.

Building on these preliminary findings, in a paper recently accepted for publication on Technological Forecasting and Social Change,² we show that the website of innovative SMEs is bigger than that of similar, non-innovative ones.

Even more, innovative SMEs use more up-to-date coding styles for their websites. For example, innovative SMEs tend to use HTML tags like <header> and <footer> than their non-innovative counterparts. As well, they use less than the other SMEs HTML tags like <table>. This highlights a greater adherence of the innovative SMEs to the more modern HTML5 coding style while moving away from the abuse of tables to structure the Web pages that was previously dominant as a coding practice.

This paper explains why the HTML code of an SME’s website may reflect its innovativeness. First, innovative SMEs need well-indexed websites to enhance visibility and sales, necessitating e-commerce, customer engagement, and user monitoring in the HTML design. Second, these SMEs typically employ highly skilled workers, facilitating ICT adoption and the integration of new technologies into their websites. Consequently, outdated or deprecated tags are less common in their HTML. Third, there is a positive relationship between website quality and a company’s dynamic capabilities, crucial for thriving in changing internet economies. Eventually, we believe that the relationship between website style and innovation activity persists even when websites are acquired as-a-service. Indeed, the interaction between the user and producer impacts the website’s innovativeness, depending on the user’s input quality and communication effectiveness.

1. C. Bottai, L. Crosato, J. Domenech, M. Guerzoni, and C. Liberati (2022). “Unconventional data for policy: Using Big Data for detecting Italian innovative SMEs.” In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on Information Technology for Social Good (GoodIT ’22). ACM, 338–344. https://doi.org/10.1145/3524458.3547246
2. C. Bottai, L. Crosato, J. Domenech, M. Guerzoni, and C. Liberati (Forthcoming). “Scraping Innovativeness From Corporate Websites: Empirical Evidence on Italian Manufacturing SMEs.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change.