Building New Product Innovation for Small and Medium Entrepreneurs

Abstract

Small and medium enterprises accounted for 99.54 percent of all the registered businesses in Thailand and 35.2 percent of the total gross domestic product. One of the challenges for those entrepreneurs was the lack of innovations in the organization. Innovation in an organization can be created in many forms, including new product innovation, service innovation, process innovation, and organizational development innovation. Therefore, this article emphasizes creating new product innovation, which consists of 5 steps. First, seeking new product opportunities: this step requires both external and internal information sources. External information sources were gathered from the studies of customer needs, building good relationships with raw material suppliers or participating in trade shows on various occasions. In contrast, internal information sources were collected from daily operations of internal processes and the opinions of employees who provided services to customers. Second, concept development: entrepreneurs had to consider who the new product's customer is, what special features the new product has that differentiate it from existing products or competitors' products, and estimate production costs to determine selling prices. Third, design and development: this step is the planning process, starting from setting time goals for developing new products, designing new products, selecting and evaluating alternative selection, and developing marketing models, operating models, and financial models. Fourth is validation through user testing, marketing trials, and production trials. Lastly, commercialization: entrepreneurs had to consider the product life cycle, whether it was in the introduction, growth, maturity or decline stage, and the impacts arising from the launch of new products.