ANALYSIS OF EMPIRICAL QUALITATIVE ARTICLES ON METHODS, TECHNIQUES, AND TOOLS FOR INNOVATION

ABSTRACT Innovation has been regarded as a crucial element to create long-term competitive advantage in companies. However, encouraging and supporting the innovation process still remains a challenge. In turn, the effective use of methods, techniques, and tools for innovation may be a significant factor to support the innovation management process, increasing its chances of success. Thus, this study consisted in a qualitative analysis of empirical articles related to diffusion and adoption of innovation methods, tools, and techniques. The articles analyzed herein were obtained through a systematic search conducted through 2 databases: Scopus and Web of Science. This systematic search consisted of 7 steps: identification of keywords; search in the databases; filtering of publications; standardization; classification of articles; inclusion of relevant publications; analysis of articles. As a result, we obtained a corpus with ten publications (nine fully available and 1 only as an abstract), where, initially, the main articles, authors, countries, and journals that have published more and the more frequently used keywords were identified. Later, through the analysis, an overview of the empirical qualitative investigations related to the theme was obtained, given the importance of MTF-I for the innovation process of companies. It is noteworthy that there are still few papers addressing this theme with the approach chosen in this research, and the results are not converging. There was a great diversity of methods, techniques, and tools for innovation used by the companies studied. Yet, we found that the use of MTF-I is significant to increase competitiveness and they are mainly used to solve problems in organizations. The need for further studies aimed to systematize decision making about the choice of an MTF-I for a particular organizational context was noticed. Thus, it is expected that this paper can serve as a basis for future research on the theme.