Management of technology in traditional industries: a pilot study in ten Belgian companies

Empirical Research about management of innovation has mainly been limited to the Anglo-Saxon world. In this paper the author reports on a pilot study, which is part of a larger project, in ten small and medium-sized Belgian companies, all of them active in rather mature industries. The study concerned aspects of idea generation, problem-solving, project selection, and some organizational aspects of the innovation process. An interesting hypothesis resulting from this study is that innovation is mainly an incremental process along a natural trajectory characteristic for the subindustry to which the company belongs, and that the selection process is for the majority of these companies only a minor problem.