AbstractEmpirical Research about management of innovation has mainly been limited to the Anglo‐Saxon world. In this paper the author reports on a pilot study, which is part of a larger project, in ten small and medium‐sized Belgian companies, all of them active in rather mature industries. The study concerned aspects of idea generation, problem‐solving, project selection, and some organizational aspects of the innovation process. An interesting hypothesis resulting from this study is that innovation is mainly an incremental process along a natural trajectory characteristic for the subindustry to which the company belongs, and that the selection process is for the majority of these companies only a minor pr