Comprehensive Innovation and its Implications on New High-Tech Product Development

Nowadays, innovation represents an essential ingredient within organizations for their survival in a strong competitive marketplace. Innovations emerging from R&D projects could represent key factors for the foundation of new businesses. Various supporting programs for establishing innovative start-ups within business incubators, as well as spin-offs within uni-versities are promoted by authorities at local and national levels. Statistics have shown that only a small percentage of these initiatives (around 30%) succeed to survive more than three years. There are various causes which keep the success rate only at this level, but a major one is the lack in understanding the complex nature of innovation by the people which initiate these businesses; they are mainly focused on technological innovation (product innovation). This paper is going to give a broader perspective on innovation, seeing it as an integrated model of product innovation, marketing innovation, production process innovation and business model innovation over their life-cycles. From this enhanced view of innovation, conse-quences on new product development are further analysed.