Table 7 presents the figures for the growth of sales, investment, and employment for
innovative and non-innovative SMEs. It is clear that innovative SMEs have registered a
higher rate of growth compared to non-innovative SMEs in terms of sales, investment,
and employment in all the three sectors. However, the growth rates of the three variables
differ within as well as between sectors. In the auto component sector, both innovative
and non-innovative SMEs registered a higher growth of investment followed by sales and
then employment. In fact, employment of non-innovative SMEs declined absolutely. In
the electronics and machine tool sectors, sales growth was higher than that of investment
and investment growth was higher than that of employment for both innovative and noninnovative
SMEs. In the electronics sector, non-innovative SMEs registered negative
growth in terms of investment and employment. Overall, the growth analyses for the
three sectors clearly indicate that innovative SMEs are better off relative to noninnovative
SMEs.