Innovation in big firms and medium sized firms. Approaches, differences and examples

Document from the year 2018 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,0, Ingolstadt University of Applied Sciences, language: English, abstract: This seminar paper tries to find an appropriate attempt to explain the differences regarding innovation in big and medium sized firms and their approaches. The main thesis is that long-term growth in profits depends significantly on firms' investment in innovation activities. In theory, large companies with big research budgets and the resources to hire top scientists and the best skilled employees should have a remarkably huge advantage when it comes to innovation. In practice, however, smaller firms with comparatively tiny budgets often manage to out-innovate the bigger, established competitors.

To understand the meaning of innovation, it is important to determine different innovative dimensions. Innovation is often stated as a "driver for success" or the "fuel" that powers our economy and leads it to prosperity, especially in Germany with its traditional organizations and their role in society. It is not only important for the economy, but they can also be a source of political and social ingredients. Innovations will play the key role for the challenges that face our global society in the 21th century. Global problems as the rise of population and mass urbanization, the global garbage problem, or climate change can only be solved by brave innovators. Those challenges can not only be seen as problems, but companies around the world can develop innovative products to accelerate their business success. The central question, regarding big firms is: How can so huge networks and highly branched systems manage the different kind of innovations? Is it really necessary for surviving?

One of the problems that many large organizations face is how to innovate successfully within the confines of a massive, bureaucratic operational structure. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the area of research and development, where small, entrepreneurial firms routinely do end runs on large companies will multi-million dollar research budgets. It is really interesting to know how flexible and adaptive big firms can be in this situation of change and how medium firms challenge different kinds of disruptions and innovations.