The authors report on a survey of small and medium-sized entrepreneurial information technology (IT) firms to investigate the impact of new service development (NSD) process activities on innovation success and failure. Their findings highlight the importance of managing the process to engage customers, management and employees, facilitating innovation champions to aid in idea generation and commitment, effectively communicating the benefits to customers, and using the tacit nature of the process to create barriers to imitation. In general, the findings point to several key elements that impact on successful entrepreneurial IT innovation projects and appear to result from an iterative, flexible and process-linked approach to NSD innovation.
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