New Product Development Assessment for Smes: A Review

The organizational and management innovation routes require suitable supporting actions capable of developing the ability to think critically and to determine personal evolution. To this purpose, assessment is an important concept, that is,, the use of models that measure the outcome of the efforts produced; the constant and repeated use of these tools, which are at the same time both guidance and auditing tools, is of primary importance. Performing organizational assessment, in fact, may help managers understand organizational performances, identify possible problem sources and define, therefore, improvement actions.For these reasons in recent years experts have started to reason upon the development of assessment tools that help enterprises evaluate the performances of their own product development process and highlight any problem areas. These studies belong to a wider literature that has drawn enterprises’ attention to the key role of organizational self-assessment as an important tool which develops the ability to think critically and to determine personal evolution.The main aim of this article consists in reviewing models for product development activities specifically addressing SMEs needs and features. The analysis underlines that the various models and tools available points out how the greater part of these methods are not really capable of effectively supporting company assessment needs since they do not envisage clear mechanisms for stimulating critical considerations on current management practices and for sustaining improvement planning. Furthermore, these tools have been developed by bearing in mind large enterprises and the implied excellence models represent a benchmark that is, very often, extremely far from the operational reality of smaller sized enterprises.