Influence of the use of tools for managing the early stage of product innovation process

The early stage of the innovation process is characterized by a great level of uncertainty. Therefore, companies must find new product opportunities and define their value proposition. Although there is a large body of literature on the evaluation of the innovation process, few studies focus on the assessment of its early phase. Our results show that the use of support tools for the management of the early phase of this process has a positive influence on product innovation. The analysis was carried out based on a sequential methodological triangulation, due to the small sample size of 84 Peruvian innovative companies.