ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how three less experienced product innovator firms approach the problems associated with bringing new products to market. Each case illustrates the problems faced by firms with little or no experience of regular and speedy product innovation. Colonial Instruments limited is a part of a large British holding group, having been bought in the early 1970s. Several executives commented unfavourably on this organisational arrangement, some even going as far as to describe the formal structure and mode of operation as "a mess". Saline Instruments was one of the founder companies of a group that was later to be merged into one of Britain's larger electrical and electronic conglomerates. A formal organisation chart is published and made available to all employees. The firm was established during the First World War and incorporated as a limited liability company in 1930. On the basis of the interview data collected within Battalion Instruments Ltd, the firm's informal working structures were scored.
