Requirements of SMEs for effective innovation management

Innovation has become one of the most important and effective ways of obtaining and sustaining competitive dominance in the market place over the past number of years. No longer can organisation depend the traditional performance metrics such as quality and efficiency in order to gain advantage over their competitors. This is true not only for large enterprises but also for small to medium enterprises. Innovation has traditionally been seen as key for those large enterprises that have money to invest and can afford to take risky investments. However, innovation plays an important role for the small to medium enterprises as the large companies often outsource many of their sub processes to them such as manufacturing. The main contribution of this paper offers a discussion of innovation management and collaboration; the paper will present the key differences between large enterprises and small to medium enterprises in relation to the innovation process; finally the paper will aim to identify areas of future research around this area that will contribute to the future competitive advantage of Irish SME's in the national and international market place.