Research on the innovation process and its effective management has consistently highlighted a set of themes constituting "good practice". The limitation of such "good practice" is that it relates to what might be termed "steady state" innovation — essentially innovative activity in product...

Considerable interest has been shown in computer-integrated systems as a means of dealing with some of the competitive challenges facing European manufacturers in the 1990s. In this paper, John Bessant and Bill Haywood review some experience with one example of such technology-flexible...

This paper looks at the management of service innovation. In particular, it explores the challenge of public services and argues that there is a need for new approaches to the ways which engage users as more active co-creators within the innovation process. It draws on wider research on radical...

The experience of implementing employee involvement in innovation can be viewed as a bounded opportunity. Whilst long-term strategic benefits could flow from organising participation across the workforce, creating structures that sustain such a culture is highly complex. In effect the...

Considerable interest is now being shown in the concept of flexible manufacturing systems. This paper reviews the early experience of a number of UK users and examines the range of choice now opening up for firms engaged in batch manufacturing operations. Although the potential benefits of...

Successful use of flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) depends on a company adopting a flexible approach to its management and organisation. This technology has now begun to diffuse widely and to be used in all major developed countries and a small number of developing nations. A comprehensive...