Open innovation for small and medium sized enterprises: Ways to develop excellence

The capability to innovate is the most critical element in sustaining competitiveness. Most big companies already are equipped with instruments and experience in innovation management but small and medium sized enterprises in contrast only have basic access to these instruments and often are faced with incompatibility of these instruments with their needs. For the strategic and operative planning, innovation processes and for project realisation, these tools are lacking. Furthermore, many tools and instruments are not even known to most SMEs. In the EC supported project "VIVA-Virtual Centre of Innovation Excellence Assessment" a innovation management toolbox, case examples and studies were developed. In this book you will find: - A thorough description of the Innovation Management toolbox developed in the project VIVA. The toolbox provides several tools which can especially help small and medium-sized enterprises to assess innovation excellence enhance innovation processes and strategies develop an effective innovation culture participate in new clusters. - A comprehensive innovation management reference model to give the user a deeper understanding of the interrelations of different innovation activities. - An description of the most important trends in Innovation Management.