Challenges for Strategic Management of Innovation in a High-Tech Firm: The Case of CPqD

This paper seeks to identify challenges for strategic management of innovation in high-tech firms, considering the case of a firm from a developing country, embedded in a highly internationalised sector and going through major organisational changes. It provides an assessment of its competitive and technological strategies, how it chooses between acquiring or generating knowledge and how it manages innovation throughout the organisational structure, complemented by a critical analysis of the market it focus. The discussion shows that the firm is under a critical learning process of developing the capabilities needed to be competitive. Its main challenge comes from how it develops new roles and capabilities for managing innovation at the same time it has to integrate those different roles, which are still spread throughout organisational structures and routines. This paper reinforces the view that managing innovation requires a strategic approach by top-management, in which an innovation strategy must be created for defining the way the firm will compete with its portfolio and secure the factors that are needed to create the core competencies and capabilities to develop a sustainable competitive advantage.