Determinants of product innovation in small firms: A Comparison Across Industries

A plethora of studies has investigated the determinants of product innovation in small firms, suggesting product, firm, market and innovation process factors as its key drivers of success. Variations across industries relating to the determinants of product innovation are often suspected, but due to a lack of data this area is underresearched. In case of major differences much previous work will be flawed. Drawing upon of database of 1250 small firms across seven industries, this paper explores if any differences are found in the presence and impact of various firm-level determinants. Controlling for size and age differences, the analysis reveals some major differences to the extent small firms use innovative practices, and their connection with new product introductions.

Organizing Successful New Service Development: A Literature Review

How should one organize new service development? This is an important topic for decision-makers in service firms. The numerous publications on this subject are highly fragmented. This paper classifies current literature on organizing new service development (NSD) into two evolutionary stages: managing key activities in the NSD process, and creating a climate for continuous innovation. For both stages, its consequences for the initiation and implementation of new services are discussed.

In Keats's Haggard Shadow : Reading Dr Haggard’s Disease as a Postmodernist Comment on Keats and Keatsian Romanticism

This article discusses how John Keats’s biography and poetry exerted influence on the development of the plot, structure, protagonists and metaphorical framework of Patrick McGrath’s novel Dr Haggard’s Disease (1993). Furthermore, it contends that the novel does not simply aim to pay tribute to Keats or to function as a literary emulation or even mimicry of Keats’s life and oeuvre. Instead, the novel suggests a postmodernist comment on Keatsian Romanticism as expressed in Keats’s poetry. An interpretation of Dr Haggard’s Disease as historiographic metafiction with an emphasis on the intertextual links between McGrath’s novel and Keats’s work makes clear that the novel’s narrator and protagonist, Edward Haggard, by way of subversion and distortion devaluates the Keatsian dichotomies of real/ideal and Truth/Beauty

Innovation in SMEs: An Empirical Investigation of the Input-Throughput-Output-Performance Model

In this paper the relationships between innovative inputs, processes and outputs, as well as its consequences for firm performance�are investigated. Based on a survey among 1303 small and medium-sized firms, the authors conclude that investing in innovation is worth doing. Innovative inputs and processes are clearly related to new product introductions and process improvements. The effects on firm performance are less evident.

Strategic Decision-Making in Small Firms: Towards a Taxonomy of Entrepreneurial Decision-Makers

Most changes in firms take place after a decision has been made. Despite that small firms are no exception to this, previous research into decision-making processes have left this subject uncharted. There are many studies with a focus on the decision-making process by managers in large firms, but only a few have paid attention to entrepreneurs in small businesses. The current study empirically investigated and identifies different types of entrepreneurial decision-makers. Drawing on a database of 646 entrepreneurs, five types of decision-makers are distinguished: Dare Devils, Lone Rangers, Doubtful Minds, Informers? Friends and Busy Bees. Implications for future research are discussed.

Gas Monitor: Developments in the Wholesale Gas Market in the Netherlands in 2006

The present situation in the wholesale gas market calls for measures aimed at enhancing competition. Our annual monitoring report into the functioning of the gas market identifies a number of serious problems that impede competition in the wholesale market. Market parties have indicated a lack of available import capacity, storage capacity and quality conversion capacity, though facilities are not always optimally utilised. The report’s findings confirm the necessity of the action plan which was presented by the NMa/ DTe to the Minister of Economic Affairs in early October this year. Improvement is required for the rules of play and the level of transparency in the gas market. It is also necessary to pursue further integration into North-West Europe.Monitoring,gas, competition, infrastructure