Entrepreneurial Coaching: Contributing to The Performance and Curbing the Obstacles to Innovation of Small and Medium Enterprises in Africa

Introduction: Innovation is a catalyst for business development, particularly for small businesses. However, the majority of African SMEs fail to adopt an innovation strategy. Aim: The aim of this work is to analyze the obstacles to innovation in an African context, with an analysis of the importance of the entrepreneurial support variable. Method: The method used in this work is a quantitative analysis by questionnaire. Our sample consists of 120 African small and medium-sized enterprises. Data analysis will be carried out using multiple linear regressions. Contributions: The contribution of this article is the analysis of the entrepreneurial support variable for innovation adoption. Results: The results of our paper, using multiple linear regressions, show the importance of the potential customer variable for investment in innovation. Entrepreneurial support, and specifically network integration, provides financial capacity, access to markets and administrative facilities, variables that are positively correlated with the adoption of an innovation strategy.