ABSTRACT

This chapter emphasizes the distinction between small technology-intensive companies and small technology-contingent companies. The former offer innovative products and are often led by entrepreneurs with academic training; the latter often produce more traditional products and are managed by entrepreneurs with medium-level technical training. Innovation has become an existential need for virtually all companies, large or small, in all sectors of the economy. Most of the literature on innovation is concerned with large companies. It is concerned, for instance, with corporate strategy and product portfolio planning, with management of research and development, technology management, cross-disciplinary teams and comakership relations with suppliers. Suppliers, customers and competitors were considered to be the most important contacts by both categories. In his paper on sectoral patterns of technological change, K. Pavitt distinguished between 'supplier-dominated', 'science-based' and 'production-intensive' firms, with the latter category divided up into 'scale-intensive firms' and 'specialized suppliers'.