Capability Maturity Models for SMEs and Collaborative Networked Organisations in Tourism

Abstract

Experiences in applying results from ECOLEAD on Collaborative Networked Organisations (CNOs) in real life have shown that the maturity level of SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises), who joined these networks, are highly different. Soon it was found out that there are different process areas in which SMTEs have strengths and weaknesses. This paper will introduce the essential process areas which should be assessed by standardised and well established assessment methods to be able to establish improvement programs out of the results. The process areas and the assessment methodology are derived from CMMI, which is nowadays the prevailing assessment method in the software development area. Typical tourism domain specific process areas are Quality Management, Yield Management, Human Resource Management, Product Development, and eCommerce. While classical process areas of CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integrated) will be analyzed insofar, if they are appropriate for CNOs and how they should be extended or modified.

A novel maturity index for assessing medical device startups

“…It could assist companies in determining the startup's current state and best path forward, help educators, accelerators, and government agencies to verify that their support programs are meeting industry needs and allow investors to profile and compare a portfolio of companies. Here we describe and validate a Startup Maturity Index (SMI) that pays homage to the well-known CMM and its many variants used by academicians, consultants, and governments [17,23,27,28]. All of these models divide the evolutionary path into a number of graduated levels.…”

“…They are often not suitable to assess the rather different and specific needs of startup companies [ 7 ]. In a recent comprehensive review of business maturity models, Virkkala and colleagues [ 21 ] pointed out that only two of the many models identified in their study even mentioned small- and medium-sized enterprises; they advocated for the development of “micro-enterprise-focused maturity models.” Further, the few currently available maturity tools that do exist are typically directed at small companies specializing in, for example, tourism or manufacturing operations that do not experience the types of impediments associated with medical products and may not have significant growth as an objective [ 22 , 23 ].…”