Product innovation in craft family firms

Abstract

Innovation in family businesses has been extensively researched. However, innovation in craft family firms has not been researched to the best of my knowledge. There could be some work–in–progress or recent publication that we are not aware of. Craft family businesses are different because of the interwoven traditions. This is the reason for our study. Three research questions and one sub question will be answered through the empirical results of the qualitative study. First of all, we looked at family involvement in innovations in craft family firms. The results show that families are involved in a major way through knowledge, passion, low decision autonomy, neutral agency costs and functional organization. Secondly, we looked at how the innovations were conducted or organized. This is through a well-thought-out strategy encouraging change. Reputation, risk taking, low formation, radical change, closed approach and long-term orientation aided in the innovation process. Hereafter, we looked at the way craft family firms use tradition to innovate. Tradition is successfully integrated into the innovation through codified past knowledge. Additionally, we wanted to know how craft family firms store or codify past knowledge. Past knowledge is stored in digitalized files easily accessible to all the employees in the business.