Innovation practices within small to medium-sized mechanically-based manufacturers (journal article)
by Glenn Brophy and Steve Brown
from Innovation: management, policy and practice, Vol 11 No. 3, 2009
"Manufacturing SMEs remain an underdeveloped area of interest in the literature on innovation. SMEs whose principal skill sets are mechanical in nature (MechSMEs) and that serve multiple customer groups offer a particularly rich context for the study of innovation practices that are mostly under the control of the firm's managers. This empirically-based paper uses case studies based on multiple units of analysis within each firm so that the overall innovation practices of four mature firms (average firm age 45 years, minimum 20 years) and the practices used within thirteen specific innovations (both product and process innovations) were studied. This combination of studying firm-specific and innovation-specific practices was used to construct a picture of the most important innovation practices within each firm." (Ask us if you'd like the full text of this article).