New product development in British SMEs

Reports the efforts of six British small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to enhance their new product development (NPD) capabilities. Finds a strong recognition by managers of "the need for NPD" yet they consistently deprioritised work on NPD when faced with other shorter-term pressures. The...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of innovation management 2000-12, Vol.3 (4), p.212-222
Main Authors: Woodcock, D.J, Mosey, S.P, Wood, T.B.W
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Colleges & universities
Competitive advantage
Costs
Data collection
Information
Innovations
Learning
Manufacturing
Measurement
New product development
Operations management
Product development
Profitability
Profits
Small & medium sized enterprises-SME
Small business
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Summary:Reports the efforts of six British small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to enhance their new product development (NPD) capabilities. Finds a strong recognition by managers of "the need for NPD" yet they consistently deprioritised work on NPD when faced with other shorter-term pressures. The involvement of manufacturing managers was limited in their firms' NPD activities. What involvement there was occurred late in the process. Identifies a major problem in terms of the lack of information available, with only a few of the firms recording the activities undertaken in the NPD process. This has a number of serious consequences; it was difficult to compare their performance with other firms and they did not have the information needed to improve systematically their systems and procedures. In those firms that did maintain records, their record keeping was limited. Much of what was recorded had little value, as it was not used systematically to improve performance. This shortage of suitable information also hindered the ability of management to learn and thus improve future generations of new products.
ISSN:1460-1060
1758-7115
DOI:10.1108/14601060010352498