Manufacturing strategies in the hand tool industry

The lack of contextual sensitivity of best practices thinking can be a deterrent to innovation in small and medium‐size enterprises if owners and managers feel that the specificity of their companies are not taken into account. Presents cladistics, an evolutionary classification technique, as a tool to be used to craft and validate manufacturing strategies. Cladistics provides a compromise between over‐prescriptive generic business solutions and cost inefficient, high‐risk idiosyncratic solutions. The contribution of cladistics as a qualitative methodology in operations strategy research is illustrated by an evolutionary classification of the hand tool industry and recommendations for innovation in this industry.