Sustainable Innovation Management in the Shrimp Sector of the Municipality of Guasave, State of Sinaloa, Mexico

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study attempted to investigate the role of perception of the entrepreneurs regarding the relevance of the sustainable innovation management in the shrimp sector in the municipality of Guasave, state of Sinaloa, Mexico. The idea of this study is innovative and very interesting and is able to make significance contribution toward the literature related with innovations across different sectors. Before proceeding for the publication process this paper needs significance changes and corrections are needed and authors need to check the write up settings of the paper as there are many mistakes and settings errors in different sections. Further I have following comments and suggestions for the authors:

1.      What is “ha” in abstract section at page 1, line 25?

2.      At page 02, line 68 needs correction and it should be connected with the figure 1.

3.      What is “Theoretical foundation: innovation and sustainability at page 3, line 86? Is it part of introduction? According to my perspective and observations this section consists of Literature instead of theoretical foundation. This is a huge mistake and could lead to rejection of the paper as the authors are not familiar with paper’s write up and settings.

4.      The presentation of Image 01 at page 4 is horrible. What authors have done with the paper’s setting is beyond my understanding.

5.      Study population and sampling is very limited and one cannot produce a meaningful contribution with such a limited study sample, I would like to suggest that authors should expand their sample to make some significance and justifiable findings.

6.      Results cannot be interpreted with such a small data sample, as there are many drawbacks with such small data when you are going to publish your paper with some well reputed international journals.

7.      The results and discussion section should be revised completely and presentations of all figures in this section should be improved with some decent looking.

8.      Relevance of the findings with previous literature is quite satisfactory.

9.      Presentation of Table 3, Table 4 and Table 5 should be improved.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, I am sending a report of changes made to the manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I have the following comments for the authors.  

 

-The writing of the manuscript in general needs to be improved.  It was difficult to comprehend at some points. 

- The citations in the text where the authors only cite the number as part of the sentence (e.g., "[14] found that....") are disruptive to reading.  Please add the authors names in cases like this, unless the journal style conventions specifically state not to. (e.g., "Smith and Joe [14] found that...")

- The authors need to more clearly define what they mean by innovation, in general.  This is lacking in the introduction, and the presentation of innovation in the context of the manuscript is fairly nebulous. 

- The authors need to justify their selection criterion.  I feel that the narrowly selected field of potential applicants could have affected their results.  Why only six farms? A quick scanning of google maps shows numerous farms in the province.  How would you expect smaller farms to view innovation differently, where cash flow may be smaller?  The authors either need to recontextualize their findings within the context of their survey (narrow, targeting a specific group of farmers) with justification, or give significant thought as to how the survey would have gone differently if they asked a broader group of farmers.

-Is it normal to interview more than one actor at a site for qualitative work?  This is not my background, but this feels like psuedoreplication to me.  If it is standard to do so, the authors need to explain this more clearly in the methods. 

-In the formula for determining sample size, N = 36 was used even though the researchers only had 6 farms.  This seems to be a discrepancy and would affect the experimental design. 

- If Crongachs Alpha is not reliable, why present it?  The authors need to either remove it from the manuscript or justify providing both metrics if McDonalds Omega is sufficient.  

- Given that most of the farms in Sinaloa appear to be in former mangrove habitat on satelite imagery, it would be have been beneficial to the overall strength of the manuscript to get a sense from the managers if they feel their farms are sustainable right now, as part of the survey.  How, if at all, was farm site location considered in the survey instrument?

-The authors define innovation through 8 subcategories, it would be beneficial to have more background on how those categories were developed.  

-The authors need to supply the survey instrument in a supplemental material

Figure 1- It would be useful to plot the growth in the shrimp sector over the same time.  

Overall, this manuscript is difficult to evaluate or understanding without viewing the survey instrument.  

Author Response

Dear reviewer, I am sending a report of changes made to the manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The comments were addressed in the revised version of the paper, and I am satisfied with the response and corrections made by author(s).