Perception of innovation in SMEs

Today, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular have to face various challenges due to the accelerating changes of external influences and internal factors. On the external side they have to consider aspects as the ever-changing market requirements and technological advances and at the same time they have to deal with knowledge management and personnel structure to name examples for internal factors. In order to confront this challenge the development of products, processes and technologies has to be at the core of innovation efforts. This task is difficult to implement for most SMEs located in the low-tech sector due to the fact that they seldom have a separate R&D department. Therefore, it is mandatory to design an efficient process for the perception of innovation to ensure the competitiveness on the market.