Inovação : estudo de caso em uma encarroçadora de ônibus de Caxias do Sul

Abstract

With the increasing globalization of markets and the gradual increase of competition, innovation can provide positive results to organizations such as profitability and competitive advantage of the creation and maintenance over its competitors - essential elements to the long-term survival. The practice of innovation contributes to economic development by giving the opportunity for new markets creation and improvement of existing markets, generating benefits for producers and consumers of new products or improved products by the innovation. In this way, it is justified the existence of a constant search for innovation. Either by the launch of a new product, or improvement in service delivery, improvement in the production process, the entry into a new market, among other ways to innovate. Innovations are responsible for major changes in the dynamics of development and the introduction of new technologies the most explicit manifestation of this dynamic. From this contextualization, this essay aims to identify the technological innovations in products and processes occurred in the company ALFA, classifying them into radical and incremental. Technological innovation contributes to innovation theory as a basis for the description of the importance of relevant concepts to the process of innovation measurement. The research method used has qualitative and quantitative approach with exploratory and descriptive purpose. The technical procedure used was a single case study. In the quantitative phase, a survey was used with a structured questionnaire as data collection instrument, which was applied to the employees of the quality area, engineering and processes of a company in the metal-mechanic industry, with a total of 60 respondents. The analysis of the data occurred in two stages. The analysis from the interviews content conducted with managers, coordinators and supervisors of the quality area, engineering and process was used in the qualitative stage. And, in quantitative stage was used descriptive quantitative analysis by chi-square frequency analysis of the data from questionnaires given to employees of quality area, engineering and process and from questionnaires given to managers, coordinators and supervisors of the same areas. The results of the qualitative phase identified the innovation implementation in products and processes in the studied company. The quantitative results indicate that innovation in products and processes implemented in the company are classified as incremental. Through frequency analysis, differences were identified between the responses of managers and employees on innovation denominations established in the company.