Innovation management is an organizational iterative process of seeking and selecting new opportunities and ideas, implementing them, and capturing value from the results obtained. In the defense sector, due to the increasing interdependence between military capabilities and technology, countries have adopted innovation management approaches to drive the modernization of their defense industrial bases, promoting the development and integration of advanced technologies. This study presents an original systematic literature review on innovation management approaches applied to defense in developing countries. After the phases of identification and screening, 62 documents both from academic and gray literature were analyzed and categorized into 22 distinct approaches. The advantages, disadvantages, contexts, and potential applications of each approach were discussed. The findings show that the appropriate use of these approaches can strengthen the innovation capacity and technological independence of late-industrializing countries, consolidating their position in the global defense landscape and ensuring their sovereignty and continuous technological progress.

Small-scale businesses have long been recognized as an important part of economic development and integrating them with industrial parks is both recommended and necessary for long-term success. In line of this, the objective of this study was to investigate the role of IPs entrepreneurial ecosystem in boosting the capabilities of small businesses. Data were collected from 245 small manufacturing business owners via simple random sampling and analysed using multivariate regression analysis. Thus, the ability of small enterprises is positively impacted by the presence of a more robust and appropriate entrepreneurial ecosystem. Similarly, a firm’s resource capabilities are more impacted by the entrepreneurial ecosystem when there is a better link between academia and industry. Furthermore, entrepreneurial skills are found to play a mediating role between the entrepreneurial ecosystem and firms’ technological capabilities. Another finding revealed that managerial expertise significantly mediates entrepreneurial ecosystems and firms’ resource capabilities. This finding suggested that the policymakers, better to formulate policies that encourages small businesses to engage in the industrial parks which results in an inclusive firm’s performance.