Management of Technological Innovation: Study of Five Portuguese SMEs

This article presents the results of an exploratory, in-depth research carried out to know the managerial practices of five Portuguese innovative SMEs. The purpose of this research was the identification and the assessment of the managerial and organizational factors which contribute to technological innovation success. The results obtained can be also useful to identify inadequate practices or even managerial shortcomings, and thus, areas of improvement. There is a set of organisational and managerial factors which ought to work together to create and reinforce the kind of environment that enables technological innovation to succeed. The state-of-the-art regarding each of those factors, as well as their application to the firms under scrutiny, are presented in this article. Two important barriers against innovation were found. On the one hand, a lack of qualified human resources was identified. On the other hand, such lack is not compensated by the establishment of external linkages with the sources of knowledge, such as universities and research centres.