Purpose – This study aims to understand how small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) can build a dynamic capability for new‐to‐market product development. Design/methodology/approach – Five innovative and ambitious case firms were selected and studied longitudinally over the course...

Purpose – Research on best practices suffers from some fundamental problems. The problem addressed in the article is that authors tend to postulate, rather than show, the practices they address to be best – whether these practices do indeed produce best performance is often not investigated....

Purpose – This paper reports the study of key success factors (KSFs) in the project management of the implementation of strategic manufacturing initiatives (SMIs). Design/methodology/approach – In order to gather the experience and knowledge of many industries, from different geographic...

Purpose – This paper describes research that has sought to create a formal and rational process that guides manufacturers through the strategic positioning decision. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is based on a series of case studies to develop and test the decision process....

Purpose – The article discusses the characteristics of the future industrial company, the so‐called interactive firm, and the challenges awaiting it down the road. To this end, a framework for the strategic positioning of tomorrow's industrial company is proposed. Design/methodology/approach...

To avoid finishing last in a competitive race which requires its participants to master a range of things all at one time, more and more corporations are deciding to outsource subordinate aspects or competencies, thereby focusing their strategic spotlight on aspects more central to their...

Explores the reorganization of a sales and distribution operation. Describes a case study in which an integrated yet flexible organization was created by focusing strongly on identifying and re‐engineering the core business process. Presents a structured approach which was developed in the...

Increasing competition at product, firm, and industry level makes it more and more important to be able to develop new products and – at the same time – develop the necessary new technologies for producing those new products. In this paper we shall take a look at how four firms go about...

The need for firms to become more innovative has probably never been greater. Today concepts such as the new economy, new technologies, hyper‐competition and clock speed are used to explain that the dynamics of competition and markets has never been greater. Thus, there is a large focus on the...

This paper is concerned with the issues of developing the competencies of the firm. The relevance of this work is based on the conclusion that competencies are dynamic, rather than stable, entities and that firms, thus, need to focus both on today’s and tomorrow’s competencies. A model for...