Product development in micro-sized firms — The case of ad hoc procedures

Three different cases are presented in this paper, they describe how product development are conducted in micro-sized companies. All companies have novel ideas that they strive to realize into an engineered product and in some cases they also provide an integrated service. Typically, product development literature emphasizes systematic development processes to sustain viable businesses. Often a phased process is suggested as the optimal model. We have found that viable micro-sized companies do not employ such processes, but rather what, seemingly, is an ad-hoc procedure for each type of solution. By doing so they face challenges to grow and to upscale the production. A key result from this study is the finding of a gap between current product development literature and the actual needs of micro-sized firms.