Despite the valuable new insights offered by our study, it does come with certain limitations which need to be considered. First of all, our findings are rather country-specific. The UK context is an important one with vital significance to the European community; nevertheless, it is rather specific and can limit the generalizability of our results. Thus, future researchers should explore the mediating effects of technological innovation on the IO – international firm performance relationship of SMEs in other countries to be able to evaluate the overall generalizability of the current findings