The report, was prepared for the Department by Dr Lyndal Thorburn, Advance Consulting & Evaluation and Dr John Langdale, Macquarie University, as part of the Science and Innovation Mapping Study. The report was released in September 2003.
The report focused on gradual (incremental) business change and improvement by examining how Australian firms innovate in ways that are not related to R&D and barriers to these forms of innovation. The findings are based on thirty case studies with mostly small firms, across a range of industries and Australian regions. All firms were committed to continuous business change and improvement.
The report found that incremental innovations was mainly directed towards higher quality or customised products/services and niche markets; and that listening to customers was very important. The main barriers to innovation were those of growing a small business, obtaining finance, finding staff, marketing overseas and relying too much on the founder. The project also found that most of the firms case studied, struggle with the challenges of growth and with the conversion of tacit knowledge to codified knowledge.