SMEs and IT innovation. what's the way forward?

Research on Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) has attracted considerable attention within the information systems community as it has been realised that small companies are significantly different than their lager counterparts. As innovation in the form of IT plays an important factor in the competitiveness of firms, SMEs and IT innovation adoption is an interesting and intriguing subject. In this position paper we try to review existing literature of innovation diffusion and adoption in order to assess its applicability in the context of SMEs. Our results show that exiting innovation diffusion models need to be further developed in order to capture the particularities of IT adoption by small companies. We conclude by offering suggestions for directions that IT innovation studies can take in the context of SMEs.