Fostering commercialisation of innovation in small high technology firms

Results from an exploratory study to identify the factors that contribute to success for UK medical device small- and medium-sized enterprises

“…Further downstream in the value chain the demands of the marketing process meant that the product companies needed to access the relevant management and marketing capabilities and in some cases sufficient resources to sustain a delayed market entry process. Unlike new and approved pharmaceutical products that are perhaps more likely to be accepted by the market, the MDT case studies showed that those companies involved in the development and commercialization of highly innovative and technology-intensive products faced additional marketing challenges, particularly those companies seeking to introduce discontinuous innovations or disruptive technologies [15,[25][26][27]29]. Marketing strategies, allied to the recruitment of senior-level marketing and sales expertise that was well networked to the target market, were frequently based on a differentiated approach to targeting early and mainstream customers [27,29].…”

“…Their approach also sought to establish relationships and collaborations with change agents or KOLs to expedite the route to end users and the mainstream market (practitioners in clinical practice) and which often served as the beginning of an iterative process of refinement and improvement of their products. Many of these activities were aimed towards gaining important information, sharing cost, analysing the market, and responding to market demand [15].…”

“…These exploratory findings call for further investigation. In considering strategic approaches for creating value in the MDT sector, there is a need to recognize the heterogeneity of MDT companies and the distinctive features of the MDT innovation process to understand better their influence on the commercialization process, particularly the transitions that determine access to financial and consumer markets [15]. Building on the present authors' [30] parallel study that has described a generic highlevel route map for health-care companies attempting to navigate the business growth trajectory, it is necessary to develop lower-level route maps to identify and assess the requirements for success during different phases of product development and organizational growth within the different parts of the MDT industry.…”

“…Rather than utilizing existing in-house resources [15], for more than half the cases (including three young companies, stages II and III) this was allied to the recruitment of senior-level marketing and sales expertise from the target market or that was well networked to the target market. However, unlike new and approved pharmaceutical products that are perhaps more likely to be accepted by the market, medical device companies involved in the development and commercialization of highly innovative and technology-intensive products faced additional marketing challenges, particularly those companies seeking to introduce technologies that cause disruption to current clinical practices.…”

“…More recently, empirically based studies have described a range of critical success factors for biopharmaceutical companies or have sought to identify business strategies capable of producing sustainable growth for biotechnology companies [8][9][10][11][12]. Few firm level studies of MDT companies, however, have been carried out [2,[13][14][15]. As described earlier, this may be because of the highly heterogeneous nature of the sector in which different submarkets coexist and that are characterized by products at different stages of the product life cycle.…”