OVERCOMING THE BARRIERS TO MANAGING INNOVATION IN THE EARLY STAGES OF NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT IN SMES

This paper centralises the management of innovation in the early stages of the new product development (NPD) process. The purpose of this paper is to describe the critical episodes that enabled an SME to successfully overcome the barriers to managing new product concepts from inception and, in so doing, presents implementable guidelines that can be used by SMEs to manage the delivery of creative and attractive new product concepts in the early stages of NPD. Action research was used to conduct a three-phase methodology involving a single case study. First, a diagnosis phase investigated the nature of innovation within the company. In the second phase, a series of iterative interventions by the researchers provided participants with both the theory and practice skills to manage innovation. The third phase involved an evaluation of the extent to which change in managing innovation in the company had occurred. The findings highlight a vast and sustained improvement in Dudley Europe‟s innovation management of their early NPD stages.