Design of Services for the Incremental Innovation Management in SMEs

Abstract

[EN] The article presents an empirical study with small and medium Peruvian businesses in the health and hotel industries aiming to develop incremental innovative products and services through insights, ideas generation, and solutions validation at the front-end open innovation strategy. The indirect research of trends, customer journey mapping, ethnography, and direct interaction with users, through in-depth interviews and iterative dynamic group sessions, generated value creation. Small businesses can develop services design according to their human and financial limitations using knowledge management processes based on four axes: scanning the environment, observing, depth interviews, and lean and design thinking. There are alternative paths that take into account and involve a greater collaboration of users that small businesses can explore and exploit in a process aimed at the user. The case study allows concluding that incremental innovation processes do not have to be tedious, uncertain, or expensive for small and medium enterprises.