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This paper aims to focus on innovation development in enterprises with fewer than 50 employees. It explores differences in innovation capacity and in the diversity of developed innovations across the four enterprise size categories within the small manufacturing and service enterprises.

The empirical evidence is based on quantitative data gathered through an e‐mail questionnaire, which yielded 708 responses from the representatives of Finnish small enterprises. The analysis is based on non‐parametric tests.

The findings display a broad diversity of innovation patterns among small enterprises. The evidence identifies differences and similarities in innovation capacity and innovation development across the different size categories within the manufacturing and service sectors. Finally, a summary of the characteristics of small enterprises as innovators across size categories is provided.

This paper studies innovation patterns based on innovation capacity and developed innovations. There is a need to study how innovation capacity has been transformed into innovations; thus, the innovation process should be included in the examination.

At a public policy level, the results of this study give ideas for encouraging innovation development in small enterprises. The evidence suggests that there are significant discrepancies between the enterprises as innovators. It should be acknowledged that small enterprises comprise several divergent target groups for policy making.

This study makes a contribution to academic literature by crystallizing the relationship between the size of an enterprise and innovation development. Applying these results will provide more specific questions for studying the nature of innovation development in small enterprises.

There are not many answers to the question of how the development projects launched to improve business performance in SMEs have succeeded. This study focuses on business development success in SMEs. The main objective is to structure and model the success dimensions that contribute to and can be used in evaluating the business development success in SMEs.

The study utilises multiple case study methodology, following the replication approach. The empirical evidence is based on data from four SMEs that have implemented a business development project. Two of the projects were perceived as successful and the other two as unsuccessful.

This study builds a framework for a business development project success in a SME context. In the SME context the business development project success seems to be dependent on several interrelated dimensions. Success in one area leads to success in other areas, and so creates an upward success spiral. Failure in one area seems to lead to failure in other areas, too, thus creating a downward failure spiral.

The results provide a basis for benchmarking one's business and evaluate how well one's own firm meets the success dimensions and its focus areas.

The framework for success dimensions has been developed providing a systematic way to analyse the business development project and its impact on the performing company. A setting for analysing the project success from different time perspectives in a SME context has been produced.

This study identifies how self-employed older women experience and represent self-integrity – an element and source of meaningfulness – in their work, and how these experiences are intertwined with gendered ageing.

The authors used thematic analysis, influenced by an intersectional lens, to scrutinise qualitative data generated during a development project, with ten over 55-year-old self-employed women in Finland.

The study reveals three dominant practices of self-integrity at work: “Respecting one's self-knowledge”, “Using one's professional abilities”, and “Developing as a professional”. Older age was mostly experienced and represented as a characteristic that deepened or strengthened the practices and experiences of self-integrity at work. However, being an older woman partly convoluted that. Self-integrity as a self-employed woman was repeatedly experienced and represented in contrast to the male norm of entrepreneurship.

The authors contribute to the literature on gender and entrepreneurship by highlighting the processual dimensions – how integrity with self is experienced, created and sustained, and how being an older woman relates to self-integrity in self-employment. The results show a nuanced interplay between gender and age: Age and gender both constrain and become assets for older women in self-employment through older women's experiences of self-integrity.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.