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Small and medium-sized enterprises are affected by changing development, production and selling paradigms in globalized industries, where innovation is a driver for sustainable competitiveness. However, innovating is highly challenging for small and medium-sized enterprises, as human resources are very limited and know-how are often highly specialized. It is often unclear which fields and factors provide the capability to innovate and which measures or methods can be applied to promote innovation based on existing competencies.

For this reason, the aim of this paper is to present a framework to support the innovation capability of SMEs by identifying promising fields for innovation and providing suitable innovation methods. A particular focus in this paper is a methodology for the description and identification of fields to foster the innovation capability in SMEs as a part of the introduced framework.

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Innovation, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, New product development, Design methods