This article examines how structural changes in small business—formalization, consolidation/fragmentation, financing reconfiguration, digitalization, and cluster development—shape sectoral innovative activity. Building a meso-level framework aligned with the Oslo Manual, it links these shifts to intermediate conditions such as market power, collaboration intensity, financing constraints, and human-capital deployment, and outlines an empirical design using panel data and quasi-experimental identification. Synthesis of comparative evidence indicates that formalization broadens participation in innovation, moderate consolidation creates slack for development projects, digitalization reduces search and coordination costs, and clusters accelerate knowledge spillovers, while excessive concentration and poorly governed clusters dampen exploratory efforts. The paper argues that effects operate through enhanced absorptive capacity and dynamic capabilities, and recommends sequenced, sector-sensitive policies that pair regulatory simplification, finance reforms, and digital public goods with capability building.

Small business, structural change, innovation

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