scholarly journals Innovation processes: do they help or hinder new product development outcomes in Irish SMEs?

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Robbins ◽  
Colm O’Gorman

AbstractSmall- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make a considerable contribution to the development and diffusion of innovation as well as accounting for the bulk of economic activity and employment in Ireland. A formal process for managing the stages of innovation projects is generally cited as a key component of best practice in new product development (NPD). Successfully managing innovation is an important business objective for SMEs, and yet, relatively little is known about how innovation-active firms approach innovation and, specifically, whether firms use formal processes to manage their NPD activities. This study of innovation-active Irish SMEs finds that three quarters of firms report that they do not operate a formal innovation process, yet this is not associated with poorer performance in terms of revenues from new products and services; and there are few differences between firms with formal innovation processes and firms with informal innovation process across each stage of the Innovation Value Chain. Having a more formal innovation process is, however, associated with success at bringing novel products to market. This study contributes to our understanding of the management of innovation in SMEs and to the emerging literature on SMEs that has emphasised both the prevalence and the effectiveness of informal management processes.

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth B. Kahn ◽  
Gloria Barczak ◽  
John Nicholas ◽  
Ann Ledwith ◽  
Helen Perks

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (02) ◽  
pp. 1850019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tor Guimaraes ◽  
Ketan Paranjape ◽  
Mike Cornick ◽  
Curtis P. Armstrong

Purpose: Important determinants of new product development success fall into five main areas encompassing strategic leadership, competitive intelligence, management of technology, specific characteristics of the company's innovation process, and the company's absorptive capacity to use available knowledge to produce and commercialize new products. Unfortunately the existing knowledge on each of these five areas is not being shared by researchers in the other areas, thus the models are focused on the particular research area. This study tests these constructs as a set of determinants of product innovation success. Design/methodology/approach: A field test using a mailed questionnaire to collect a relatively large sample of manufacturing companies has been used to test the proposed model. To eliminate possible multicollinearity among the independent variables, a multivariate regression analysis was used. Findings: The results provide clear evidence about the importance of competitive intelligence, strategic leadership, competitive intelligence, management of technology, specific characteristics of the company's innovation process, and company absorptive capacity with company success in new product development. Research limitation/implications: Despite the relatively broad scope of the proposed model, other factors may also be important and should be included in future studies. Practical implications: The items used for measuring the main constructs provide further and more specific insights into how managers should go about developing these areas within their organizations. Originality/value: While the study is grounded in the literature of what until now have been five separate areas of knowledge, it proposed a unique integrated model for these areas important to new product development.


Author(s):  
Christer W. Elverum ◽  
Torgeir Welo ◽  
Martin Steinert

The fuzzy front end (FFE) of new product development (NPD) is a term that refers to the early stages of the innovation process. This paper investigates the FFE in the automotive industry and addresses the challenges of working in this phase of the innovation process, as well as the academic definition of the FFE relative to the real world. Two parts of the innovation process have been identified and characterized as FFE: the concept-work within satellite front-end departments and the work within the pre-development phase of the vehicle new product development process. It has been identified that one of the greatest challenges related to working in the FFE is developing viable concepts that will “sell” internally. Estimating and conveying the overall value of the final product in terms of costs and customer benefits are two of the key elements that make it difficult to achieve internal “buy in”. Furthermore, it is argued that the most common academic perception of the FFE seem to be inadequate since it only concerns work that ends with a go/no-go decision whether to continue into development or not. Consequently, it fails to capture early-stage development work of transformational innovations, where the decision of development has already been made and the uncertainty is related to the execution of the work — and — not the outcome. Semi-structured interviews with a total of eleven employees at seven different automotive OEMs form the basis for the conclusions made herein.


2006 ◽  
Vol 10 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZOE J. RADNOR ◽  
HANNAH NOKE

This paper will present the development of an audit tool called the Innovation Compass. It will show how the tool was formulated through a research project, which was aiming to understand the innovation process within organisations. The creation of the Innovation Compass was driven by the research process and, as this paper will give an example of, validated through its application to case studies. The paper gives a greater understanding of the elements of the tool and, how it could be used and developed in other research projects considering innovation and New Product Development.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mateus Panizzon ◽  
Gabriel Vidor ◽  
Maria Emília Camargo

PurposeContinuous understanding of the best practices associated with new product development is a constant research opportunity to advance knowledge in the field, as far as changes in the business environment and the increasing turbulence level in different market segments create and reposition the importance of practices over time.Design/methodology/approachBased on a systematic review, the study aimed to analyze the 100 most relevant articles published in international journals on new product development (NDP), identifying new patterns on the best practices for new product development and the types of relationship involved in NPD.FindingsAmong the several practices observed in the literature, the analysis point to a larger group of studies that converge on the identification of a positive and significant relationship in integration – simultaneously – between supplier, company, customers and strategic alliances and the performance of NPD.Research limitations/implicationsThese results support integration as a cross-cutting and structural best practice for NPD, as long as it is constituted as a capacity, mainly applied in highly turbulent environments. This approach supported the proposition of a new framework.Practical implicationsOrganizations will be able to implement the proposed framework to NPD strategy in order to prioritize resources in best practices, aiming to increase the performance of new product development.Social implicationsThe adoption of integration and co-creation practices for the development of new products expands the possibilities of economic and social development, based on the involvement of the actors in this network.Originality/valueThis model had not yet been proposed in the literature, filling a gap in the agenda for future studies.


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