**4. A systemic view of innovation management in SMEs in the dairy sector**

It is generally recognized that innovation is a systemic, complex, and dynamic phenomenon, resulting from the evolution and changes of various agents, organizations, and institutions. Various authors have described the systemic nature of innovation in companies:


Consequently, it is pertinent to approach the phenomenon of innovation in companies based on systems thinking. This perspective offers an alternative for the conformation of innovation models that, in a holistic manner, meet the needs of analysis of causes and synthesis of effects for decision-making in companies.

We can understand innovation in manufacturing SMEs as a social, concrete, dynamic, and open<sup>2</sup> , system, with origins outside or inside the company, which operates within the company and transcends to its environment, and whose innovations produced continuous feedback to the system as a whole. The system serves both internal customers (owners, managers, employees, and stakeholders) and external clients (consumers, suppliers, contractors, intermediaries, and competitors, among others). The following is a description of the elements of a proposed system for innovation in manufacturing SMEs engaged in the production of dairy products.


<sup>2</sup> Social system: System in which the parts and the whole are intentional.

Concrete system: At least two of its elements are objects.

Dynamic system: One to which events occur and change in time.

Open system: One that has a medium.

*Toward the Adoption of a Framework for the Systemic Management of Innovation in SMEs… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112036*
