Innovation in Small Business

Innovation in Small Business
INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESS
By Michel Tunney, BA, MRUP, MSc (Innovation Management), C.Dip AF.
CEO Donegal County Enterprise Board.
Last year I attended a seminar given by Professor John Bessant, then of the Centre
for Research and Innovation Management at the University of Brighton on the topic
of innovation management and small business. In his introduction Professor
Bessant quoted from the first page of A. A. Milne’s ‘The World of Pooh’ – an unlikely
source of insight for innovation! For all parents the story of Christopher Robbin and
Winnie the Pooh is very familiar. The first paragraph of the book goes as follows
“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of
his head behind Christopher Robbin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of
coming down stairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only
he could stop bumping for a moment”. Generally speaking there is always a better
way if we could only make the time to think about what we do, how we do it and
how we could do it better?
Doing things differently, better, quicker and more cost efficiently are all what
innovation is about in small businesses. Unfortunately too many see innovation as
only the application of new technologies or the carrying out or application of formal
research and development. This reflects one of the main difficulties when
discussing innovation in relation to its application to small businesses – what exactly
do we mean by innovation and what do we mean by innovation in small business?