Innovation processes within the healthcare industry: determining critical success factors aligned to product strategies

Summary form only given. This paper attempts to illustrate the impact of differing product strategies on product innovation processes pursued by healthcare firms. The approach taken centres on recognising a definite split between pioneering product strategies and late entrant product strategies. The product innovation processes of two firms are then investigated and compared. The findings from the study are far from conclusive and need to be treated with some caution. However there seems to be some evidence that in defining themselves as pioneers or late entrants, firms (in some cases unknowingly) are also defining the processes they use for innovation. By doing so a set of innovation success factors has emerged for both pioneers and late entrants.