Building competitive skills in small and medium-sized enterprises through innovation management techniques: overview of an Italian experience

Abstract

The paper reports on the work and the results of the IMTIC (Innovation Management Techniques for Industry Clusters) Project supported by the European Commission’s Innovation Programme. The purpose of the project was to make industrial small and medium-sized enterprises aware of the possibilities offered by innovation management techniques (IMTs) in planning and implementing long-term business strategies. IMTs were presented and outlined to a number of industrial clusters in five Italian regions in the areas of: (i) marketing of innovation, (ii) Technology Watch (TW), (iii) Technology Search (TS), (iv) management of intellectual property rights and (v) quality management. The Institute for Studies on Research and Scientific Documentation (ISRDS) of the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy was one of the subcontractors for the project. The main task assigned to ISRDS/CNR was to set up the methodological framework for two innovative techniques: TW and TS. In particular, the methodological process for setting up TW and TS is described. Monitoring by ISRDS of the project phases and the control of the results are also described.