The development of the personal innovative competences in workers is of capital importance for the competitiveness of organizations, where the ability of the employees must respond in an innovative way to diverse situations that arise in specific contexts. Considering this, the question arises: How do innovative employees’ competences affect the sustainable development of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs)? Therefore, the objective of this work is to present a multi-criteria method based on the Analytic Network Process (ANP), to relate innovative personal competences and the sustainable development of MSMEs. An instrument was applied to groups of experts from 31 Ecuadorian fruit-exporting MSMEs, to develop a multi-criteria decisional network that allowed identifying the innovative personal abilities that have the greatest impact on the sustainable development of these organizations. The results demonstrate the relevance of the elements of innovative personal competencies, with a cumulative participation of 39.15%, Sustainable Export Development with 32.18% and Improvements with 28.66%. It also presents three types of analysis: i) Global to establish the weight of each variable; ii) Influences, to establish solid cause-effect relationships between the variables and iii) Integrated. The most relevant innovative personal competences for sustainable development and improvements for exporting SMEs are teamwork, critical thinking, and creativity within the international context.

This study examined socio-economic factors affecting Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSME) e-commerce adoption, focusing on gender, income, and education. Using the 2022 National Socio-Economic Survey (Susenas) data, a logistic regression model was employed to analyze key determinants of e-commerce utilization. Additionally, an online survey of 550 MSMEs across 29 provinces was conducted to assess the impact of digitalization on business performance. In comparison, an offline study of 42 MSMEs with low digital adoption provided insights into the barriers hindering digital transformation. A natural experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of behavioral interventions in promoting the adoption of e-payments and e-commerce. The main contribution of this study lies in integrating large-scale national survey data with experimental approaches to provide a deeper understanding of digital adoption among MSMEs. Unlike previous studies focusing solely on socio-economic determinants, this research incorporated a digital nudging experiment to examine how targeted incentives influenced e-commerce participation. The findings revealed that digital transformation significantly enhanced MSME performance, particularly in turnover, product volume, customer base, and worker productivity. Socio-economic factors such as gender, household head status, and social media access significantly influenced digital adoption decisions. Behavioral nudging proved effective in increasing MSME participation in e-commerce. Although this study was limited to Susenas 2022 data and survey responses, it bridges a critical research gap by linking socio-economic factors with behavioral interventions in MSME digitalization. The findings offer key insights for policymakers in formulating evidence-based strategies to drive MSME digital transformation and e-commerce growth in Indonesia.