26th International Association for Management of Technology Conference - IAMOT 2017

This study analyzes the dynamics of Product Design and Innovation in industrial SMEs in the province of Tucumán, Argentina. This group of companies, according to the literature is not particularly innovative, and is made up of companies mostly with low technological development. For the analysis, 10 best performing companies were selected from a group of 50 SMEs selected at randomly. These companies constantly renew their products and do so through different approaches that are conditioned by the type of companies, their degree of technological maturity and the profile of their managers. Surveys applied to companies during a semester of Business Organization subjects were analyzed. The surveys are open and oriented, where the interviewers, who are students of the course, have studied in the form of cases the dynamics to be relayed in companies. Using qualitative analysis methodologies, the answers are categorized in order to classify them into standard response types, which are then analyzed to obtain the results. Dynamics of Innovation, Product Design and Use of ICTs in companies are highlighted in relation to the mentioned aspects. Finally, these results are related to the maturity in the management of the companies and the results are analyzed. The results indicate that a greater degree of maturity of the management is usually accompanied by a significant intensity in the Management of Innovation and Development of new products. The use of ICT is more intense in the companies with the highest performance, especially the fact that companies that implement ICTs in the products design processes usually have a marked difference in the performance of the overall management. One important result is the link between the company's performance and the manager's profile, which is usually favored by the profiles of collaborative leaders versus leaders with greater tendencies towards personalism. This works allow to learn about the importance of the use of ICTs in the SMEs, and the relationship that exist between the intensity of ICTs implementation, the manager profile and the enterprise performance. In Tucuman, the use of ICTs is not extended and the evidence found in this paper may be useful to understand the subjacent processes that ICTs enhance and consequently, enable competitiveness in the overall business process