Program for International Conference on Management of Technology 2007

Developments in nanotechnology, the application of scientific advances that occur within the range of 1 to 100 nanometers to commercial use, appear to be poised to have a pervasive and significant impact on various industries for many years to come. Yet, peer-reviewed technology management journals offer little guidance yet on how managers should prepare their organizations for the onslaught of the product and process innovations promised by nanotechnology. In this paper, we suggest a theoretical framework for viewing nanotechnology-based innovation in the context of general purpose technology (GPT), provide supporting results from our analysis of nanotechnology-related patent data, and discuss theoretical and practical implications. Drawing from the economics and technology management literatures, we propose that nanotechnology is a GPT, a type of technological innovation that displays particular diffusion trends and characteristics. For example, GPTs have a high capacity for improvement and are accompanied by intense innovative activity that spreads across many technological sectors. In addition, the rate of diffusion of GPT-based innovations is complicated by the reciprocal relationship between advances in the basic technology and advances in its application in various sectors. Defining nanotechnology as a GPT this early in its development could prove helpful in forecasting its future technological trajectory and in informing management and policy decisions regarding nanotechnology research directions to enhance its positive (and mitigate its negative) economic and societal impacts. We test our proposition that nanotechnology is a GPT by analyzing the diffusion patterns displayed in nanotechnology-based patenting activity. We overcome existing ambiguities around the definition of the term nanotechnology by first casting a wide net to capture all patents with the prefix nano contained either in the abstract or in the full text of the patent. We then perform content analysis of the full text of random samples of patents drawn from our database to screen for what is (and what is not) nanotechnology. Our analysis of the remaining nanotechnology patents indicates that they differ significantly from general patents in ways that are consistent with the characteristics of a GPT. For example, they are significantly more widely and frequently cited by other patents and they display a particular diffusion pattern from one technology sector to another. We provide data and examples of nanotechnology’s demonstrated capacity for improvement, growing amount of activity, and its pervasiveness across multiple technological sectors. Finally, we develop some theoretical and practical implications that arise from nanotechnology being a GPT. For example, if nanotechnology is a GPT, it should be expected to display tremendous improvement over time in terms of the extent and cost- effectiveness of its applications. Further, as derivatives of a GPT, nanotechnology applications should be expected to vary widely, with some being radical and disruptive and others, only incremental innovations when compared to the technologies they replace. We draw on the technological innovation management literature to show that categorizing each nanotechnology-based application as a specific type of innovation is essential to managers’ ability to prepare their organizations to succeed in the face of oncoming nanotechnology-based changes.

Recently open source code philosophy became one of the most popular topics in the innovation literature. Because open source philosophy creates an unique opportunity for developing countries, not only in terms of improving the national IT infrastructure, but also in terms of generating innovative capability in software technology through producing innovation networks. Open source code software development enables successful collaboration and promotes high level contribution of different parties in production and innovation processes of software development. It is strongly believed that open source code phenomenon is highly driven by individual choices and voluntary work. Therefore, individual open source code followers had been the focus of the recent research that has been carried out on this field. However, in order to benefit from the opportunity that open source code philosophy offers, developing countries need to understand the technological, economical, social and business related factors that affect the development of an efficient national open source code economy. Technology foresight, on the other hand, is a very valuable tool in understanding these factors since it offers a multidimensional analysis of the open source code technology and related issues. This paper examines the factors that have an impact on future trends in the open source code software development from a developing country perspective. Based on the findings of a technological foresight practice on software technology in Turkey, we carried out a SWOT Analysis on the application of open source code philosophy, hence evaluated the weaknesses and strengths of different factors that have an impact on the open source code development in Turkey. It is concluded that the successful adaptation and exploitation of open source code in Turkey is very much related to having and implementing concrete national open source software driven information technology policy. Hence, some policy suggestions tried to be made regarding the required technical infrastructure, innovative/competitive business climate, skilled human resources and supporting institutional structures in order to benefit from the advantages of open source code in a developing country.

Crucial to business growth and sustainability are the awareness of business enterprises of emerging technologies that impact their work environment and their capacity to manage change. This is particularly true in the present increasingly competitive and dynamically changing global business environment. Management of technology (MOT) aims primarily for effective utilization of emerging technologies, in a standalone and self-supported mode and/or in a hybrid environment that integrates a wide range of technologies, not only limited to emerging technologies. Evaluation, ranking and selection of competing technologies in a business environment are essential functions in a supportive MOT system for a business enterprise. This paper presents a Decision Support System (DSS) for selection of inspection methods, including those that are newly developed, for water mains. This is a relatively large sector, considering the deteriorating conditions of water distribution networks in major urban centers in North America. The developed DSS considers a wide range of non-destructive evaluation methods of water mains. The methods considered utilize technologies; based on acoustics; electromagnetic; visual, thermography or tracer gas methods. The developed system consists of two components: 1) Database Management System (DBMS) and 2) Evaluation and ranking module. The database is a relational, designed and implemented in MS-Access and Visual Basic environments, respectively. The evaluation and ranking module is hierarchal in structure and was developed using multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT). The developed system has a number of interesting features; 1) practical user-interface; 2) capacity to accommodate different types of commercially available inspection methods; and 3) efficient data representation, storage, sorting, and retrieval. A case example is presented to demonstrate the use and capabilities of the developed system. The developed system can be easily adapted for selection among competing technologies in other business sectors.

As part of continuing studies of management of technology for the developing Service Sector, a analytical technique, Data Surface Mining (DSM) has been applied to a variety of data bases. In this study, the Forbes data base of the world’s 100 most powerful women was analyzed to ascertain the relative presence of the Service and Goods Sector. It was found that 83% of the power women operate in the Service Sector and 17% operate in the Goods Sector. Those in the Goods Sector were observed to be disproportionately present in companies related to food, health and personal products. It was found that thirty-two of the women in the Service Sector were in public service or government, pointing to these areas providing mobility career paths. The implications for technology management in the economic sectors and the issue of minor involvement of power women in technology management are reviewed.

The open innovation paradigm has got a lot of attention in both academic and business world lately. It arises from the idea that knowledge has spread widely and become more specific. All smart people do not work for us and companies could not survive on their own anymore. The open innovation approach aims at effective exploration of essential new innovations with profit maximization. It suggests that new innovations can also emerge from outside the boundaries of the company and may be commercialized by some other way than through company’s own processes and business units. Typically, the R&D departments have been tightly closed from outsiders, but the important aspect of the new approach is collaboration with other companies, universities and other instances. The variety of utilization options of the open innovation paradigm makes the approach difficult to adopt and adapt. On the other hand, there are many companies that have successfully implemented the open innovation even before the actual term had been launched by Chesbrough (2003). In the paper, we study the implementation of the open innovation paradigm in eight companies, Cisco Systems, DuPont, IBM, Intel, Lucent, P&G, Philips, and Sun Microsystems, that have adopted the open approach to their innovation processes. These companies are good examples of implementing the new paradigm of innovation and represent different aspects of it; exploring new ideas from outside the company, collaborating with partners, licensing intellectual property, using venture capital and corporate venturing to create new start-ups, spinning-off technologies and practicing open source policy. The paper introduces their way to utilize the open innovation successfully. We examine the financial performance and productivity of the companies in period of 1996-2005. We observe how “open innovation” has performed in the stock markets and how the adoption of the different form of the open innovation has effected on the R&D investments and the productivity of patents during the examination period. In addition, companies are also compared with each other. Conclusion of the study is that best practitioners of the open innovation have outperformed on stock markets by creating wealth from investments in innovation activities.

The term ‘innovation’ has been diluted in marketing material of firms, but there is also ambiguity in the way it has been used in academic literature. In addition, there is plethora of different extensions, such as radical, incremental, architectural, open, disruptive, that have been used to describe and emphasize different innovations at different situations. In any event, innovation typology is inconsistent and despite some attempts to clarify the situation the underlying concept of innovation still remains vague. Furthermore, a product innovation is a subclass that has received less attention in terms of definitions. This paper aims to provide coherence to confusion of concepts. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to propose a new framework that defines product innovation from a single firm’s viewpoint. We stress commercial success as a key driver of product innovation. Other aspects are newness and value, which both are perceived from the market perspective. Because commercial success is related to diffusion and adoption, time is also taken into consideration. Firms are not ever-patient and a product that does not become successful in a specified timeframe will be terminated or temporarily pulled out from market. Actual period of time for this decision may differ significantly depending on an underlying industry. The definition of success is the most troublesome part in our framework. Objective measurement of success is challenging. Therefore, the framework is formulated from a firm-centric viewpoint. In that sense, we postulate that success is defined by a respective firm in advance (prior launch) based on their internal goals and objectives. One of the key premises behind our framework is that innovations can be claimed and justified only retrospectively. An idea that has traversed through new product development process from mind-to-market is still a mere innovation try-out before otherwise proved. Only after commercial success it becomes innovation. Other possible outcomes are failure and mediocrity.

The research study draws upon three case studies of design-driven innovation analysing the changing modes of governance for the acquisition of external technology knowledge across new product development (NPD) stages. The design-driven innovation is a particular kind of innovation in which the novelty of both a message and design language is more important than the novelty of functionality and technology (Verganti, 2003). In this perspective, the adoption of new materials (materials that were not used before for a certain function inside the company), offers greater opportunities in creating new messages and supporting the design language generation while new materials may also inspire the creation of innovative products (Asbhy, 2002). In any case, a company that develops new products using new materials faces different problems and challenges related to product engineering, equipments and process technologies. This research study focuses on this topic, with the specific aim of studying the different governance mechanisms for technology sourcing chosen by design-oriented firms with the goal of developing new products using new materials. An exploratory analysis has been conducted, considering some cases of design driven innovation (with new materials) developed by three Italian design-oriented firms belonging to the following sectors: household objects, sporting clothing and interior decoration. In-depth interviews, using a semi-structured interview guideline, were conducted with the key actors involved in NPD process. Results show that in the early stage of NPD, when technological uncertainty and the need of additional resources were very high, firms chose informal innovation networks (Van Aken and Weggeman, 2000). Once the product concept was defined, these firms moved to more formal cooperation agreements with some strategic partners. In the final stage of NPD, hierarchical governance mode seemed to prevail (Van de Vrande, Lemmes and Vanhaverbeke, 2006). To conclude, the firms, in which the innovation design driven using new materials played a strategic role, seemed to follow an organizational pattern of technology sourcing starting from informal network and ending to hierarchical structure in NPD. Factors influencing the choice of this governance model are discussed in the paper and hypothesis for further research study are developed. The paper has several managerial implications: ? first it shows that technology cross fertilization between sectors (for example space sector) plays a strategic role in design driven innovation; ? second it examines how the governance modes for the acquisition of external technology knowledge change across NPD stages, ? third it suggests a governance model for design driven innovations where factors influencing the choice of governance structures are quite different from other kind of innovations.

Most of the traditional pricing policies can not be effectively utilized in the software business context, because of the characteristics of the product, cost structures behind the research and development process and emphasis on maintenance and other services necessary for running the software. In recent years, we have seen the emergence of revenue logic concept based on business model literature, but the concept is as yet fairly “fuzzy”. Therefore, the concept deserves theoretical examination together with an empirical research in order to position the term within management literature and software business. The purpose of this study is to increase understanding of the elements behind assembling and collecting revenues in software business. This is done by investigating the interplay between different related concepts of revenue logic, strategy and business model. The most central concept is revenue logic, which describes the holistic view of how a company finances its operations, in other words how and from whom the revenue is collected. Revenue logic is a description of company’s revenue sources and how business generates profits. It is a logical model or plan with a view to achieve profitability. Revenue logic is usually considered and reviewed from the industry’s point of view, albeit the unit of analysis is software vendor based. Shortly, revenue logic can be defined by questions of who pays, what is paid for and what is included in the price. Pricing is seen as the most important part of revenue logic including the basic idea of principles for achieving the financial goals and representing the fit with realities in the market. Pricing is most often examined to be more company specific element. Revenue logic analysis consists of evaluating elements of business models acquainted in software business context and exploring alternative pricing principles and revenue models which have effect on generating revenues in software business. With regard to software product and service business, it is relevant to examine the effect of degree of standardization and value streams of software products as well as introducing typical pricing principles currently used in the industry. The qualitative analysis is based on two interview rounds: the first round discussions were carried out via telephone with 15 well established software companies, to receive information in order to build up an outlook of understanding and usage of revenue logic. The second round of complementary interviews were held with 7 software company’s managerial representatives in order to gather in-depth information for estimation of revenue logic affecting elements. The aim is not to produce statistical generalization but rather to describe occurrence of revenue logic and to make reasonable interpretation by qualitative methods. The results indicate the importance of understanding and development of revenue logic deployment for the benefit of software vendors.

Why is Toyota the Number Two automobile manufacturer in the world, and steadily growing? How has the U.S. military improved equipment maintenance turnaround an astonishing 15,000%? The same way more and more forward-looking companies driving out inefficiencies in their supply chains and delivering better quality and lower prices to their consumers: Lean Thinking. Lean Thinking (also known as "Lean") is a set of revolutionary principles that guide us to reexamine our definitions of quality and instead focus on our customers' definitions of value. Mary and Tom Poppendieck's book Lean Software Development translates Lean's manufacturing-oriented principles into software development terms. In this presentation, I'll introduce these principles and discuss how the lessons Lean has been teaching manufacturers can be applied to a software delivery organization. I then explore how the Unified Process®, or OpenUP®, can provide the technology support required to implement a Lean approach in your software development organization.

Power conflicts are a pervasive phenomenon and an omnipresent variable in the organizational life. Hence the need to study them. Nevertheless, interpersonal power conflicts are a neglected topic in Information System development (ISD). Based on definitional properties of interpersonal power conflicts identified in the management and organizational behaviour literature, this paper uses a qualitative approach to explore the relationship between power exercise and the success or failure of an IS project. The present study is conducted in the Tunisian Chemical Group in order to explain the failure of the budgetary application. It is concluded that knowledge held by users or IS professionals is the main source of their power. Such power is exerted in order to influence the process of decision making. Furthermore, a significant difference between powers exerted by each stakeholder emerged throughout this study: (1) Through their power, IS professionals tried to involve users in the project development, (2) Users manipulated the knowledge they possess to hinder the ISD process, (3) Top management power was necessary, especially for resolving power conflicts occurring between these two teams. In addition, power games were determined by stakeholders’ perception of the advantages of such application. In fact, owing to a non-perception of any interest, users resisted disseminating and sharing information they hold. This was the primary cause for the budgetary failure.

Switzerland spends by far the most on insurance services in the world. The occupation in the tertiary sector increases constantly whereby the financial services have the heaviest weight in the sector. It has been identified that the innovation management has a special meaning in the service sector and a significant influence on the innovation force and capability of enterprises. The understanding for the service innovation and especially for the financial services is much smaller in comparison to the innovation management know-how in the producing industry (Nightingale 2001). Contrary to other industries the providing of an innovative service offer is also only little systematized (Brown and Eisenhardt 1995). In this connection a precise understanding of the innovation management in insurance companies appears as a necessary condition and a first step for a successful catch up. Therefore it was tried to get insights in the strengths and weaknesses of different innovation processes and management models and to make a cross-case comparison between different service enterprises. - Which are the relevant differences in the innovation management of insurance enterprises from other branches? - How can a specialised innovation management model contribute to the innovation rate of insurance enterprises? - Which are the relevant key factors in a (dynamic) insurance innovation system? Methods: - Exploratory, conceptual approach (Boyer 1988). - Cross-case comparison (Eisenhardt 1989). - Expert interviews. Results: The main result will be the understanding of the system interrelations of regulated and deregulated service industries, but also a basic model of the insurance innovation management. The main result will be a system image containing all components which the branch has in common. This will result in a increased transparency and will yield a considerable gain in knowledge regarding the forces acting upon the enterprises. A major step in elaborating the system image is the recognition of the causalities between the branch classes and the determination of their susceptibility to influence. The paper describes guidelines for best practice and gives the identified key factors of influence. Key conclusions: The key findings of this paper include - A systematic innovation management model can be useful to increase the innovation rate - The innovation process in the insurance services differs significantly from others service industries. - A regulated innovation system has an influence on the innovation rate of enterprises. The question is how it can be used in a positive manner.

The studies of innovation have been burgeoning in service sectors and few of them include the public administration into the scope of service innovation. However, it is uncharted in the dynamics of service innovation in e-government initiatives, defined as innovation activities during the process of employing technology, particularly the Internet, to enhance the access to and delivery of government information and services to citizens, businesses, government employees, and other agencies. We propose a framework to address the innovation activities of government’s employment of technology and examine whether the dynamics of service innovation varies with the information specificity of different organizational types. For decade, Taiwan had introduced Internet as the facilitator to speed up public services online. In this paper, Taiwan’s major e-government projects are identified, such as e-taxing, e-registration, etc. A semi-structured interview will be held to the stakeholders in e-government initiatives, including technology providers, head of the project, IT staff, domain experts etc. Some propositions will be proposed for further studies. This paper will contribute the innovation studies by providing the proactive richness of service innovation in e-government initiatives. In practice, the study of innovation processes of public sector throws light on innovation policy across the whole economy.

Globalisation is an important phenomenon. Even if it has been that since the introduction of steamships, railroads, and the telephone, it is currently under reshaping in a away that we need a new paradigm to understand it. The core driving force for this is in new technologies which make also many services tradable commodities. In this paper I show that because of the technological development has opened up new possibilities for offshoring of services, globalization has entered a new phase. This creates also new types of management of technology challenges. The earlier phase of globalization (“first unbundling” according Richard Baldwin) meant that it became economical to locate factories far from consumers. The current phase (“second unbundling”) means that it is economical to pick some stages of value chain and locate various production stages far from each other. Policy lessons from the new paradigm are: unpredictability, suddenness, and change in individual-versus-sector trade off. Governments should be more cautious when they try to pick up winning sectors. They, too, may contain loosing tasks/jobs.

his study looks for the development of a strong tool of internal marketing and internal communication through the intranet according to users perception and characteristics. SPRINK began to implement marketing strategies in the end of 2002. The direction of the company considered to be better to begin it's strategy from within outside, to obtain a solid base, supporting all the future marketing expansions; like this, the company thought first about satisfying it´s own personnel. The directors consider that the employee's satisfaction constitutes an essential factor for the quality of the service and, consequently, the external customer's satisfaction. The company is investing resources to obtain a larger knowledge of the employee's through the construction of an intranet, used as a tool of internal marketing. A quantitative research with all potentials users of the Intranet at Sprink was applied and this research disclosed that the perception and the characteristics of the users have a considerable importance for the development and the implantation of the Intranet, providing a better communication in the company. To analyze the research it was used the method of canonical correlation and the result was very positive.

Most companies do not have a strategic plan for ‘resting or retiring’ their technological products and services in Africa and this is in the spite of the fact that most of these technological products and services will invariably end up in Africa and indeed remain in Africa for a longer period of time – especially for the more successfully commercialised ones. Reasons why inadequacy is given to Africa in the firms’ business plans include, lack of peace and security in Africa, the presence of fragmented and undefined markets almost all through the region, inadequate physical and social infrastructures, the absence of an effective and regulatory framework and weak financial systems amongst others. There are reasons however why the writer believes the development of a strategic business plan for the resting of technological products will bring great competitive advantage to companies. One of the more compelling ones is the fact that businesses are aware of where the products will eventually end – and remain for a long time – and should plan for that. This paper - using extensive documentation reviews, experiences, interviews, surveys and an interdisciplinary approach – investigates the reasons around why companies must take time to develop strategic business plans for the effective retirement of their technological products in Africa. Relevant successful case studies are also presented. On the basis of findings, a four-staged approach is recommended for the strategic development of an Africa ‘resting’ plan. It is expected that this pioneer study will motivate further research into this topic.

The competitive edge of a nation depends on the collective performance of its system which is involved from creation to end use of the innovation. National Innovation System (NIS) which encompasses this system provides a thrust to innovative performance. The elements of NIS with effective linking can create much larger benefits out of mere R&D activities or as perceived from a singular R&D system. Value maximization out of a technical innovation goes much beyond research as it needs design, engineering, production, teaching and many other activities. As a network of organizations from various areas it acts as a catalyst to strengthen the innovation development and exploitation. On one hand interlinkage among entities in NIS helps the technological growth of the nation and speeds up the technology development process but on the other hand poses a set of challenge due to their diverging objectives and different obligations. This paper presents the drivers of technological innovation for three key sub units of Indian NIS. The paper examines the literature on technological innovation, determinants of technological innovation and models of technological innovations. It proposes a conceptual model of technological innovation process to derived to identify various drivers of technological innovation. Every technological innovation requires two kinds of drivers: triggering drivers to initiate the innovation project; and enhancing drivers to take it to its logical end i.e. to the successful commercial application. A questionnaire survey based study was designed to collect the data from various subunits of NIS. Two hundred firms were selected based on R&D intensity of the organization from Prowess Database. Fifty public academic institutions and fifty public funded research labs were selected. One hundred and twenty responses received from various sub units. The important key drivers of technological innovations are identified for the sub units of Indian NIS, based on the responses. Further, the paper also discusses important triggering and enhancing drivers for various sub units.

Risk management is systematic process of planning for identifying, analyzing, responding to, and monitoring project risk. It involves processes, tools, and techniques that will help the project manager maxinize the probability and concequences of positive events and minimize the probability and concequences of adverse events. Most of cost over runs or schedules delays in projects, is because of risk which have not been foreseen in projects initiation and planning phases or macro-environment changes and when occur, can have sever effects on project trio-objectives. To avoid schedules delays, a team in planning department of PKEM COMPANY TOOK ACTION IN IDENTIFYING GENERAL RISKS AND DETERMINING BEST ERSPONSE PLANS IN INDUSTRIAL AND automation projects. This paper states the risk management process which is planned in PKEM Company to help project managers in handeling and controlling their risks.

Organizations are subjected to forces pushing for change on the one hand and forces resisting change on the other. It is found that various organizations adopt different strategies for making change and meet with varying degree of success. Also, it is true that there cannot be a universal strategy to be adopted by all organizations for successful change. It will rather depend upon their prevailing conditions, the product range, work culture, unions, education level of employees, financial status and constraints, state of technology and so on. This paper has been undertaken with the aim to analyze the change process adopted by various organizations and the amount of success achieved and to develop effective change strategies to be adopted in future for meeting success. Matrix of change has been used in this paper as a tool to evolve the change strategies in Indian automobile industry. Instead of considering various automobile organizations independently, they have been categorized into four groups depending upon type of products, operations, strategies, time at which actions taken, and results of change achieved. Matrix of change for these four categories of case organizations has been constructed to result in the final recommendations.

We propose a modeling framework based on multi-agent models for analyzing the effects of environmental measures that depend on environmental technological innovations. We discuss two topics. Firstly, we outline the existing approaches and clarify the objective of formulating our framework. Previous major approaches have been: 1) economic rationalistic models, and 2) logistic curve models. We augmented the latter models by applying multi-agent models and by setting the parameters of technological advancement and parameters of consumer preferences on the multi-agent framework. We present our framework. Secondly, as an example of usages of our framework, we present an estimate of diffusion of hybrid electric vehicles (HV) in Japan until 2030 and of its effects on abating CO2 emissions.

With the global eco-awareness, the European Union has claimed several regulations, such as the EC Directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment (RoHS) and the Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). Some authors think that the regulations of environment and product packing have urged business to focus on a certain issue, such as the problem of waste. In addition, with the popularity of the green supply chain, the concept of reducing waste has forced business paying more attention to the recycling of waste. Within the cost issues of the reverse supply chain, the uncertainty factors of the quantity of recycling, lead time and quality have currently beset the manufacturers. This will demolish resources and expenses of the recycling centers and processing centers. Therefore, this research expects to predict the quantity of recycling by employing the concept of reliability. Furthermore, we will construct a model to reduce the frequency of risk happened and to determine the minimum cost in the reverse supply chain. By using the proposed model, managers can make decisions more quickly and correctly.

“Ilha do Mel”, located in the Shore of the State of Paraná, is part of the largest preservation area of Brazil Rain Forest, has a great development potential for the ecological tourism and for the sun, sea and leisure found in its beaches. This article presents the results of a study of the degree of clustering, competitiveness potential and of the sustainable level of the tourist activities of Ilha do Mel and its economic, social and environmental impacts. The model analyzed by the authors is theoretically based on the cluster concept and typology adapts and integrates this approach into the analysis of systemic competitiveness (in the meta, macro, meso and micro levels) and the conception of sustainable development (in the economic, social, environmental and cultural dimensions). The field research was made by means of interviews with the local community such as guest house, restaurants managers and sales people; representatives of the dweller’s association and commercial associations, representatives of public entities. The results of the research have shown the frailty of the clustering degree increased by the low sensitivity of the native community and the local company owners regarding the association and cooperative aspects. The relation with the suppliers takes place out of the island limits and does not show any type of cooperation regarding the purchase, promotion or services provided to the tourists. A great number of conflicts are also evidenced between public entities of environmental protection and the island management and the entities supplying the basic infrastructure. The relations with the university are isolated and the island inhabitants and the companies do not perceive a return from these relations. Ilha do Mel though having a great ecological tourism potential and the natural beauties does not have competitive power with other tourist island attractions such as Ilha de Florianópolis, Ilha de São Francisco and even the Paraná and Santa Catarina seashores. The lack of competitiveness is caused by two basic problems: sanitation (no water quality, no garbage collection no sewer collection): super-structure of hotels and restaurants which by law cannot go over certain limits of construction and architecture type; low quality of services provided to tourists and low professional skills/education of the company owners and managers who explore the activities only during the summer time. As to sustainability big problems have been identified regarding the environment once that the sanitation conditions are not compatible with the size of the population in times of high flow of tourists. In social terms it is observed a degradation process of the local community with the destruction of values and of the survival means of the native community. Together with tourism comes the consumption of drugs by the community, prostitution and the economy is affected by the sale of the properties to foreign company owners. This study also points out steps for the sustainable development of tourism cluster, which may simultaneously prevent the social and ecological degradation.

Over the past few years, sustainable or “green” innovation has occupied a top-ranking position on the agenda of many firms. This has partly been driven by prominent failures like Shell’s Brent Spar experience or Nike and the Asian “sweatshops.” Sustainable innovation (SI) can be broadly defined as an innovation that has to consider environmental and social issues as well as the needs of future generations. Therefore, SI is generally more complicated than market innovation (Hall and Vredenburg, 2003). Besides external pressure from governments or non-governmental organizations (NGOs), customers, to an increasing extent, have set out to demand products that have been produced in a sustainable way, i.e. in an eco-efficient process, consuming less resources and energy, reducing environmental stress and improving health and safety conditions for employees as well as for customers, the local community or society in general. In addition, sustainable innovation practices have become an important channel for establishing favourable firm reputation which in turn has been linked to competitive advantage (Rindova et al., 2005). Therefore, firms that are capable of realizing such product and process innovations have developed certain skills and competencies for achieving competitive advantage. It remains unclear, however, what are the specific factors that lead firms to innovate in a sustainable development domain. We extend existing literature by investigating this research question both theoretically and empirically. We split the broad concept of sustainability into three distinct areas that will allow for a more differentiated approach: (1) resource/energy cost saving, (2) reduction of environmental stress and (3) health and safety. Our hypotheses are developed on potential impact factors which combine internal capabilities and external forces: innovative capacities, management expertise, idea diversity, cost/risk exposure as well as regulatory and customer demands. In contrast to most studies in the field we are able to provide quantitative verification. We test our hypotheses empirically using German innovation data from 1,946 firms for the year 2005. Germany has frequently been regarded as a European lead market for all kinds of sustainable innovation activities (see for example Porter, 1990). Considering companies with product or process innovation activities we estimate a trivariate probit model that looks at firm and innovation behaviour characteristics of sustainable innovators for each of the three innovation types. Our preliminary results indicate that a demanding regulatory environment is the most important driver for all variants of sustainable innovation; most pronounced in health/safety and environmental innovation, to a lesser degree in resource/energy saving. The latter is additionally propelled by an abundance of qualified employees as well as innovative impulses and ideas from competitors and suppliers. Finally, health/safety innovations are pronounced in market-driven companies, i.e. with impulses from customers and competitors. The results show that firms willing to engage in sustainable new product development should particularly have an eye on their competitors, suppliers and customers, depending on the type of sustainable innovation activity. This requires, however, the build-up of own absorptive capacity by putting an emphasis on research spending and investing into qualified employees.

The management of uncertainty in the development of radical technological innovations has been studied, with a focus in the fuzzy front end stage of innovation development process. The development of innovations, which will be new to the company or even to the world, is always very challenging and risky because of uncertainty in many aspects of the development and commercialization processes. Tools and procedures used for the management of incremental innovation development, exploiting current lines of business, may not give much help in the case where one aims to deliver a product, process or service with unprecedented performance features. In this paper an opportunity and risk management based assessment model is proposed for the management of uncertainty in the front end of radical technological innovation. The core for the uncertainty management is the modelling of front end activities where five elements were identified: opportunity identification, opportunity analysis, idea generation and enrichment, idea selection, and concept definition. Other elements important in the uncertainty management include strategy, corporate culture, and networking. Important decision points were identified at opportunity analysis, idea selection, networking and at the gate preceding product development stage. Special attention was paid to the development of tools and procedures for the uncertainty management at these important decision points. For examples, the tools include a new tool called Opportunity Balance Matrix and a new application of a known method called Potential Problem Analysis. The developed tools and procedures support decision making already at early phases of the front end work. Early decision making and upper management support can give effective guidance for the remaining front end work and make effective use of resources possible throughout the innovation process. All the uncertainty management actions will increase the possibility of successful product launch in the future. The model for the uncertainty management has been applied in a few conceptualization cases at different companies and industries. In this paper examples of uncertainty management at the front end work of the Center for Printed Intelligence at VTT are given.

To date, many scholars have analyzed technological diversification and its influence on the performance of a firm. These studies are chiefly classified into two types: The analyses on macro or meso-level from the perspectives of nations or industries, and the case studies focusing on certain firms. Generally speaking, both approaches depend on the HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index) or entropy utilizing numbers of patents or science and technology papers as the outcome of firms’ R&D, and trace the trend in the technological diversity in a certain period. In other words, few researches have undertaken the analysis on the technological diversification of many firms at the same time and its dynamic mechanism. Therefore, this paper attempts to elucidate empirically how most firms change the nature of technological diversification over time. In this paper, R&D adaptability is defined as the ability of firms to choose R&D subjects and technological fields flexibly and appropriately in response to external environment such as technology trends and market demands. This ability is considered as a specific type of dynamic capabilities. This R&D adaptability is also considered to prompt the change of technological diversification with time. This analysis focuses on Japanese firms which demonstrate high R&D expenditure and high R&D intensity simultaneously and divide them into two groups, i.e. firms with high performance and firms with low performance, based on their performance such as operating profits. The different aspects of two groups are empirically analyzed by the IPC code data of patents over the period 1990 - 2003. The results show that both groups have diversified technological fields in terms of HHI and entropy. However, while firms with high performance have been changing their focuses of R&D activities over time, firms with low performance have sustained R&D activities almost in the same fields. This result implies that in order to achieve continuous growth, firms need to diversify the R&D fields and subjects by changing the technological fields in response to external environments. In other words, the co-evolution of technological diversification and R&D adaptability is critical to the R&D activities of firms.

How new technologies emerge and become innovations remains difficult to predict, especially in today’s environment where so many elements can intervene in the innovation process. The recent interest in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies offers an interesting opportunity for researchers to examine the different phases of the innovation process. Although this technology has improved substantially over the last few years, its adoption by the business community still poses some challenges and unanswered questions for both developers and potential users. This paper examines the role a university laboratory played in the creation of a regional innovation ecosystem centered on the RFID phenomenon. This has led to the creation of a” living laboratory” designed to better understand the adoption of RFID by a group of supply chain members pursuing intra and interorganizational B2B process optimization. The laboratory revealed a strong potential to help the stakeholders develop a mutual understanding of concepts, highlight technical problems and align business processes.

Companies, which are working in the new products development process NPDP, suffer from a high failure rate for their new development projects. The NPDP projects contain generally high levels of risks and uncertainties, which come from several sources: the preference and needs of the consumers, the changes in the companies’ environment, regulations evolution, the competitors’ behaviour… One mean to reduce these uncertainties is to focus on the up-stream phases of the projects (or front-end), trying to workout the best product definition before going to development. In our work, we help the companies by proposing a methodology to assess the acceptability of a new product. Built within on the Stage-Gate system frame, this methodology is based on the Kano questionnaire. The Kano model distinguishes three kinds of product requirements: “Must-be”, “One-Dimensional” and “Attractive”. This model assumes that fulfilling individual requirements doesn’t mean necessarily a high level of customer satisfaction. We propose some improvements to Kano methodology, trying to introduce some enhancements to the classification identification. The use of matrix calculations will provide, for each requirement, two kinds of scores (functional and dysfunctional). These scores will identify the requirement class (“Must-be”, “One-Dimensional” or “Attractive”). Then, we propose to compare different concepts of products responding to different combinations of requirements. The methodology is considered as a decision-aid tool for project managers. It can be integrated within the customer requirements identification phases, within the Stage-Gate System model.

Technological innovation is becoming the main point in the strategic management of companies. Within these last years, we attended the growth of the reflections underlying a true correlation between the development of innovations and the achievement of competitive advantages. However, innovation is often analyzed through very fragmented works, which often lead the managers to some misunderstanding. Indeed, several authors were interested in studying tangible products or “goods”. Some others are recently dealing with the study of services. However, researches tried to transpose the industrial models on the field of services. A distinction should be made between the service (as a complement to goods) and the service as a central activity (combined or not with goods). In this work, we are interested in focusing the service as a central activity. Being conceived mutually with technological components, this particular kind of innovation is very present in the telecommunication sector. In this work, we will discuss again the current literature on the technological innovation. Our aim is to propose a theoretical framework dealing with the main issues of service innovation strategy. In order to accomplish this, we will start by presenting the main conclusions about the traditional approach of innovation. In the second part, we will study the service innovation by giving our own definition, typology and its main characteristics. In a last section, we propose a theoretical framework based on the main issues of strategy towards goods-based service. Besides, we will specify the key factors that should be retained from both industrial and “service” field.

Transformation of healthcare industry is in demand by the public and is an important initiative by the U.S. government and healthcare communities. However, making sure the solutions delivered for these initiatives meet the needs of the end users is challenging. Using an example of health information exchange network this paper illustrated a methodology of managing such requirements using requirement software tooling to ensure the investment in technology aligns with the business needs during the course of the adoption of information technology in healthcare industry.

This paper examines the growing literature on innovation in services by focusing on previous classification typologies and taxonomies, and by assessing their domain of applicability within the services industry. It further provides an opportunity map by identifying possible research questions and appropriate frameworks for their analysis. A special section on services science, as part of the journal Communications of the ACM (2006), called for a multidisciplinary effort to conceptualize the emergence of a services science. One of the primary reasons for such an interest in establishing a new academic discipline was the remarkable growth of the service industry, which now dominates economic activity in most advanced economies. While there is plentiful literature offering theoretical frameworks for analyzing the mechanisms of innovation, a unified model for analyzing innovation in services has yet to emerge. According to Howells (2006), researchers are being too cautious in generating novel concepts and ideas with respect to services and innovation. There are different schools of thought when innovation in services is concerned, ranging from merely adapting the manufacturing-centered innovation models, to demarcation frameworks that focus on the unique characteristics of services which emphasize the fundamental differences in the innovation process between services and manufacturing. In this paper, we map various taxonomies of innovation in services with a view to identifying their application areas. Following an exhaustive literature review, we compare different approaches to studying service innovation, examine their characteristics and limitations, and propose directions for consolidating the existing models for analyzing innovation in services.

Development is inseparable from Technology. And it is the same with the systems related to health technology . But there are some points which can turn this relation to a unique opportunity or vice versa, to a serious threat. In most cases “growth “ is mistaken for “development” and this will have great effect on designing of macro policies of organizations. When deciding on Development , a major question is brought up, and that is what must be developed and to what extent ? Usually there is no specified Scientific criterion for determining the Axis of Development. In this presentation, we have tried to make a clear distinction between “Growth” and “Development “ by presenting a few applied models on the one hand, and to solve the problem of appropriate Determination of Development Axis in the Health Providing Systems through a Road Map and a completely Scientific Model based on the Principals of Industrial Engineering and Statistical Approaches on the other hand.

In the past decade Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have come to be increasingly used to provide enhanced services to customers. Yet, there is a remarkable paucity of studies that investigate the dimensions of ICT-enabled service provision, its antecedents and its consequences. In the study reported here of retail banks in India, we define ICT-enabled service provision along two dimensions derived inductively from case studies - channel depth and channel width - and relate it to its antecedents and consequence. The study finds that at a low level of technology diffusion, slack resource position, network size and firm age significantly influence ICT-enabled service provision. At a high level of technology diffusion, however, network size and slack cease to significantly influence service provision and the influence firm age drops. At a low level of technology diffusion, ICT-enabled service provision is found to have a positive effect on stock market performance (in terms of the P/E multiple) but no significant effect at a high level of technology diffusion. An important implication of the study for managers is that ICT usage is well worth the effort, and a wait-and-see attitude towards technology is not likely to be beneficial. Although industry and country specific, we believe the study can be of relevance for researching ICT-enabled service provision in other industry and country contexts.

The joint increase in the number and size of patents filed around the world puts the patent system under pressure. This paper analyses the sources of this surge in number of claims and pages of patent applications at the EPO. Four hypotheses are scrutinized: the diffusion of national drafting practices, the increasing complexity of inventions, the emergence of new sectors, and new patenting strategies. The results show that the increasing voluminosity is explained by all these hypotheses and suggest that the diffusion of the US model through the PCT is one of the major factors driving the size of EPO patent applications. These results also illustrate what European patents can reveal about the US patent system.

R&D collaboration between firms and public research organizations (PROs) is considered a key component of national systems of innovation. A direct benefit from these collaborations is the production of new scientific and technological knowledge, which is disseminated essentially through publications and patents. In this paper, we empirically address the issue of the economic factors shaping the publishing and patenting patterns in public-private R&D collaborative settings by drawing on the data from a survey conducted among laboratories of the largest French public research organizations in the chemistry and life sciences fields. We consistently find that consortia collaborations tend to discard patents while they are supported by the development of new product innovations. Moreover, the proportion of post-docs in the laboratory’s workforce is correlated with more patents than publications. This result is original and highlights the key role played by post-docs for the production of commercially relevant knowledge in French public-private R&D partnerships. It stresses the need for more explicit human resource management tools and policies directed towards this fraction of the knowledge production workforce.

Today, organizational focus is shifting from material to immaterial sources of economic growth. This represents the changing perspective of organizations from working with limited resources and hidden business practices to sharing knowledge and licensing the technologies available so as to ensure mutual benefits. Accumulated knowledge, innovation and creativity enhance the organizational knowledge output. Intellectual assets like intellectual capital, intellectual property, and organizational capabilities are contributing towards strengthening the business performance and economic growth. Intellectual Property (IP) which is understood as a crucial contributor for the knowledge economy is one such important intangible. IP describes the ideas, inven¬tions, technologies, artworks, music and literature, all of these are intangible when created, but become valuable in the tangible form as products or service. Intellectual capital of an organization is considered as a sound parameter of benchmarking the overall progress, and competence. As IP outputs are intellectual capital intensive and knowledge driven, their evaluation and management with the support of organizational knowledge and skills becomes vital. Management of IP too requires contribution from several areas and intellectual capital is one such area which supports mainly in generation, and exploitation of IP. This paper presents a critical review of literature in the area of intellectual property management, intellectual capital and organizational capabilities and proposes a conceptual framework to comprehend the role of IPM and IC in enhancing the firm performance. The paper also discusses how knowledge oriented intellectual property management system can help in encouraging organizational innovation capabilities.

This paper illustrates the topology and morphology of patent, licensing and royalty fees flow at global and regional levels. It addresses issues within the dynamics of international flows of fees for international property rights and associated services, and the organisational behaviour of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). The major challenges concern how developing countries can exploit the patterns of international flows of patent, licensing and royalty fees. In this regard, the nature of fees flow and issues within the structure and dynamics of firms' international engagement and associated technology flows are examined through a lens that focuses on international business. A positive economic, in contrast to a normative, perspective is assumed. However, a key contemporary concern relates international business to industrialisation. A close examination of the dynamics of international flows of fees indicates extreme asymmetries in the structure of flows and flows occurring predominantly within the organisational boundaries of the MNEs.

This paper focuses on various strategies that patentees increasingly adopt to file their applications at patent offices and evaluates their impact on the value of their filings that is whether they result in more or less valuable patents. Such strategies include drafting by assembly of multiple priorities, patent flooding, divisional filings, and jumbo applications. The impact of these on different indicators of patent value (namely grant decisions, family sizes, oppositions, and citations) is tested econometrically on a large database containing all patent applications filed at the European Patent Office from 1990 to 1995 (about 350,000 applications). The results provide a contrasted picture. At first sight, most strategies (such as the number of claims or pages per claim and the roots of divisional filings) seem to be associated overall with more valuable patents, but most of them (such as divisional filings) have variable effects depending on the value indicator used and abusive behaviours (such as filing extremely large patents) tend to lead to lower value. In addition, at a broader level, the results presented in the paper offer a comprehensive assessment of most indicators and determinants found in the literature at lower scales (i.e usually tested on much smaller samples). This broader picture reveals that most determinants used in the literature actually depend on the indicator used and that a very limited number of them seem reliably consistent across indicators, industries and countries. Among these, the number of inventors and the roots of divisional filings have a consistently positive impact on patent value, no matter the indicator, the region or the technology at stake.

From Schumpeter to current scholars, many economists engaged in technological progress studies. To gain competitive advantage, either companies or states, must pay more attention to the technological progress’s effects in their economic running. Seen globally, technological progress has been playing an important role in economic growth. Statistics from China provides sound data in supporting this point. Through Granger Causality Test, we find that there exists an interactive effect between economic growth and technological progress. The importance of arguing the effects of technological progress has gained increasing attraction, especially with respect to employment studies, for human being pursues both economic growth and full employment. Between technological progress and employment problem, there is in some cases a complicated relationship. From an industrial angle of view, choosing the type of technological progress varies in the three industries, which results in the variation of employment trends. There are two aspects in consideration when we evaluate the employment functions of technological progress. One is the choosing of the type of industrial technological progress. The other is the changing trend of social demand of that industry with enhancement of income level. The types of technological progress and the changing trend of social demand are different among the three industries. Consequently, the employment trends across the industries are different. It is instructive and valuable finding ways to implement positive policies of employment. To probe into this research, we choose different industries from 4 representative cities nation-wide, which include Suzhou, Weifang, Harbin and Urumqi. Employing data on varied technological progress contribution rates and employment rates, conclusions can be drawn that the effect on employment construction and gross employment by technological progress is quite interesting. It depends on the evolution of the technological progress types and the demand construction within the three industries. Based on substantial evidence, and with Data Envelopment Analysis (we construct a DEA model), one can easily see that in a long run, technological progress affects employment through an inherent function. Therefore, ways to enhance technological progress and implement positive policies of employment should be as following. First of all, we should encourage enterprises to adopt appropriate technologies. Secondly, we should be careful to choose import technologies. The key to implement positive policies of employment is to enact employment-enhancing industrial polices. On the one hand, we should promote the development of mid-small enterprises positively in order to expand the employment routes. On the other hand, we should fasten the progress of the tertiary industry and other labor-intensive industries. The truth is, presently in our country, especially for mid-small cities, to adopt appropriate technologies, and then based on independent innovation, positively fastens the development of labor-intensive industries, could help in confronting the strategic HRM issues.

Legal stipulations for accessible websites, like section 508 in the USA or the german BITV are targeted at people with real disabilities. This is reflected in the fact, that these stipulations were embedded in regulations dealing with disabled people. Because of the german regulation BITV that requires all federal websites to be accessible by the end of 2005, the german armed forces started a project to achieve this goal. Initially this project intended only to redesigning the user interfaces of the external websites by implementing a new styleguide. While developing the styleguide it became obvious that dealing with accessability will lead to changes in areas beyond the user interface: • change the content presentation from content-centric to user-centric • employ accessability to make applications agent-agnostic (independent from different types of web browsers) • target the content very easily to different devices (PCs, PDAs, Smartphones) • provide skinnability with minimal effort by using standard-techniques for accessability The resulting web sites are only the starting point to employ accessability in real defense applications. Here accessability is not needed because of disabilities in the normal sense. Rather the users are very often limited by one or several ot these factors: • have to employ special devices like PDAs • use connections with limited bandwith • have restricted ability to use normal human interface devices like mouse or trackball (e.g. in moving vehicles) In this context classic accessability is proposed as a general design guideline for all web based application as these technique adress a large number of problems in defense applications: • to minimize the influence of stress • to incorporate "human factors" • to perform information operations

Guidant Corporation became the source of public controversy after the disclosure of previously known, low frequency defects in several implanted cardiac defibrillators manufactured by its Cardiac Rhythm Management business unit. Although device flaws and errors are inherent in any manufactured product, especially implantable medical devices, careful design and error estimation, frank assessment of device failures, and timely disclosure of potential problems to patients and physicians can help mitigate further damage caused by device failure. Furthermore, companies such as Guidant, which are governed by engineering ethics, business ethics as well as medical ethics, are responsible for establishing corporate procedures that best serve patients, physicians and stockholders. Codes of ethics, previously established in various fields to codify standards of ethics and professional conduct, can serve as guidelines for some best practices. The report of an independent panel charged with analyzing and evaluating Guidant corporate practices is assessed against the background of the codes of ethics of three established professional organizations, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE),the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), and the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE).

The spread of cellular phones is changing society. It has not only the positive impacts. There is no specific treatment for the potential problems in innovative functions and services of a cellular phone. We consider a cellular phone as a novel technology that has been created with the development of ubiquitous society. This research focuses on the gap between the "novel technology" and "users unchanged consciousness" resulted from the increase in number of users as well as the functions' advancement at an extremely rapid pace. The purpose of this research is to predict the potential risks arising out of the spread of a cellular phone and the sophistication of its functions to minimize the adverse effects on future society. We consider that we can detect such potential risks at an early stage by investigating the movement of the internet as a source of the risks and the terminal users. Further we made a follow-up research for the risks detected.

Our survey’s major aim is to improve the correlation between the European Engineers Trainings and the SMEs’ needs in innovation competencies. These offers were collected from France, Germany, Spain and Sweden in order to compare the SMEs’speech. Our general work is about understanding what the competencies in innovation are and how they are built by the innovators. The hypothesis of a cultural variability in the social representations of what an engineer in innovation is, is proposed. We also suppose that the social representations are supplied by the trainings, which question the trainings logics. Our methodology is based on the Social and Human Science tools, in particular a content analysis. Our lexicometry study protocol allowed us to analyse qualitatively and quantitatively more than 300 job offers in Europe. We used a categorisation of terms depending on four dimensions of competencies in innovation : interpersonal dimension, intrapersonal dimension, cognitive dimension and reflexive dimension. The first analysis unlighted a fifth category of competencies that we call “unknown competencies” because it can’t be linked to any of the four dimensions. For instance, we can cite the cases where the candidate “must be charismatic” or “ must have a high potential”. When the SMEs require such competencies, how can they evaluate them ? These kind of requirements are interesting especially for the researcher in Science Education to improve Engineers curricula in innovation.

While models of entrepreneurship increasingly recognize that entrepreneurial behavior varies cross-culturally, little attention has been given to understanding how culture affects the specific domain of technological entrepreneurship in emerging economies. South Africa is a young democracy with several political and social legacies from previous dispensations. The development of a vibrant entrepreneurial society in Africa’s largest emerging economy is of paramount importance to sustain this infant democracy economically amidst challenging realities of job creation and foreign investment attraction. In a country with diverse ethnic and societal fragmentations, the impact of cultural heritage on the various national economic drivers is yet to be fully understood. To address this gap, this paper illustrates how culture may affect the various components of individuals’ behavior during the new technology-based venture creation process, through to full business maturity. Findings from a study by the University of Pretoria on technological entrepreneurs in the province of KwaZulu-Natal not only confirm certain existing entrepreneurship development models, but provide new insight into the embeddedness of culture in the dynamics of technological entrepreneurship. Contemporary debate topics such as religion, race, gender and language influences are elevated to new perspectives by empirical evidence. The findings are significant for policy and strategy formulation as it merges variants of multi-cultural and emerging economies with those of developed societies.

The purpose of this document is to examine the implementation process of a global corporative project oriented to the habilitation of collaboration technologies in a large Mexican firm. This study is based on the events occurred during the development of a global corporative project whose product was their Enterprise Portal called CEMEX Plaza. The results showed here represent a qualitative research done in CEmentos MEXicanos (CEMEX) during the years 2003 and 2004. CEMEX is a one hundred year old firm that has developed capabilities to successfully compete in an international environment. In the last 20 years, this firm has been recognized for its permanent technology assimilation process. This process involves business processes, production processes and the most relevant the massive use of Information and Communication Technologies, as a strategic element in their world expansion program. The methodological techniques used on this research were phone and personal interviews, short stays in corporative office with key actors of this project, observation and documental review. Also I saw people from several business areas operating the Enterprise Portal performing their daily activities. Through this study, I demonstrate that corporative projects in this firm have suffered a homologation process of their resources, intended to create a corporative identity. In this process four key elements are involved: person, organization, culture and technology. These elements collaborate in the codification and transmission of knowledge for the generation of capabilities. Technology assimilation process in this Mexican firm was influenced by the following key factors: Collaboration job practices, technology adoption legitimacy, definition of collaboration policies, business processes management and a mature Information Technology and Communication capability. The management of capabilities of CEMEX is based on a complex process that involves creation, maintenance, monitoring and control of their internal standards, propitiating the consolidation of their corporative models (CEMEX Way as a governance model, and CEMEX Plaza as a technological model).

This paper describes the progress of research aimed at developing a model for green operations, which seeks to improve environmental decisions in organisations and is applied in the automotive industry. The main motivations for the paper are increasing concerns and pressure for better environmental performance of businesses, in particular the automotive industry due to its large consumption of raw material and the related environmental impacts of vehicle production, use, and final disposal. In fact, the development of BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) is likely to accelerate the pollution of air, water and soil, as well as intensifying the depletion of natural resources due to their large populations. Thus, the complexity of today’s global economy and the uncertainty about remaining resources and their regeneration make environmental management one of the central concerns to companies and countries that want to be competitive in the future. The automotive industry also faces economic challenges because car makers have been struggling against high break-even points, low profit margins, saturated markets and high investment costs for new assembly plants as well as water and energy consumption during manufacturing, toxic emission from production processes and stricter regulations for emissions, use and final disposal of the cars. The model described in this paper draws on three major fields of research, i.e. Environmental Management, Operations Management and Automotive Production. Its framework is based on a review of the literature relating to sustainability and the automotive industry. The main results of this work so far are the proposed model of green operations itself and its application for automakers. It has a life-cycle approach and focuses on the phases of the operations function, connecting them to existing environmental practices or development of a new technology. The starting point of the green operations model is an environmental SWOT analysis, rather than the more usual approach of identifying significant environmental aspects and impacts. This change tries to highlight possible solutions and promotes a proactive behaviour among companies towards a more sustainable and greater financial performance. This paper accomplishes two out of the four phases of our research: literature review and framework development. The other stages are the empirical research and model validation. The first will involve a survey among managers within the automotive industry, and the second will be a case study in an automotive company. The limitations of the research relate to the current application of the model, focussing only on the automotive industry. Further research will be undertaken to widen the model in practice and ensure the model can lead more organisations to make better sustainable decisions. It is intended that this paper will lead to a better understanding of environmental issues amongst researchers and practitioners that are interested in sustainability, especially for automotive industry. Its relevance is based on the summary of the various concepts, strategies and knowledge on sustainability and the automotive industry, as well as the current lack of a single approach that integrates sustainability in car makers’ operations.

While analysing the pre conception steps, you have to evaluate the pertinence and the feasibility of the result of each step. Tools and methodologies coming from innovation sciences can be used to perform this evaluation. The aim of this paper is to find out how to integrate the sustainable development concept (with environmental, social and economic impacts) in these tools through an application in the wood furniture design. First, we study frames of reference (like norms, labels or laws) and methodologies available to perform this evaluation. We can quote the Life Cycle Assessment which is a process to evaluate environmental impact, or chain analysis, or risk analysis to measure the activities impact on the health and the safety of population and workers. In a second hand, we build an evaluation methodology of the sustainability of wood furniture. The wood furniture design has been chosen because this activity is largely represented in the Lorraine economic network and a lot of research laboratories in Lorraine are working on this domain. Doing so, we identify some measures from the sustainable development concepts with an application in the wood furniture design and manufacturing : - the environmental impact of the product during its life cycle (environmental aspect) - the safety and health impact of the activities for the design and the manufacturing of the product (social aspect) - the ergonomic and safety aspect of the product itself (“societal” aspect) - the durability of the economic activity (economic aspect). Actually, our questioning is “how can we integrate these measures in the wood furniture design during the preconception phases?”

The complexity of integrating the concept of sustainable development and the reality of technology or innovation management practices has been argued. The purpose of the research was to establish a conceptual framework of the technology management field of knowledge and identify the departure point for further research in terms of incorporating the concept of sustainable development into the field. From a review of the literature it is concluded that sustainability aspects are not addressed adequately in technology management theories and practices. The subsequent conceptual framework defines the context better in which sustainable technology management should occur. Emerging technology management practices related to sustainable development do emphasise the focus on technology strategy, selection and transfer, especially between developed and emerging economies. At the core of these issues lies technology assessment that also forms part of other technology frameworks and methodologies. For the departure point for further research it is therefore recommended to concentrate on the development of technology assessment methods, based on the modification of the Technology Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Space Map analytical techniques, that incorporate the dynamic interactions between nature and society that is researched in the newly established field of sustainability science.

This article presents the results of a study of the degree of clustering, competitiveness potential and of the sustainable level of the tourist activities of Ilha do Mel and its economic, social and environmental impacts. The model analyzed by the authors is theoretically based on the cluster concept and typology adapts and integrates this approach into the analysis of systemic competitiveness (in the meta, macro, meso and micro levels) and the conception of sustainable development (in the economic, social, environmental and cultural dimensions). The field research was made by means of interviews with the local community such as guest house, restaurants managers and sales people; representatives of the dweller’s association and commercial associations, representatives of public entities. The results of the research have shown the frailty of the clustering degree increased by the low sensitivity of the native community and the local company owners regarding the association and cooperative aspects. The relation with the suppliers takes place out of the island limits and does not show any type of cooperation regarding the purchase, promotion or services provided to the tourists. A great number of conflicts are also evidenced between public entities of environmental protection and the island management and the entities supplying the basic infrastructure. The relations with the university are isolated and the island inhabitants and the companies do not perceive a return from these relations. Ilha do Mel though having a great ecological tourism potential and the natural beauties does not have competitive power with other tourist island attractions such as Ilha de Florianópolis, Ilha de São Francisco and even the Paraná and Santa Catarina seashores. The lack of competitiveness is caused by two basic problems: sanitation (no water quality, no garbage collection no sewer collection): super-structure of hotels and restaurants which by law cannot go over certain limits of construction and architecture type; low quality of services provided to tourists and low professional skills/education of the company owners and managers who explore the activities only during the summer time. As to sustainability big problems have been identified regarding the environment once that the sanitation conditions are not compatible with the size of the population in times of high flow of tourists. In social terms it is observed a degradation process of the local community with the destruction of values and of the survival means of the native community. Together with tourism comes the consumption of drugs by the community, prostitution and the economy is affected by the sale of the properties to foreign company owners what brings the loss of the survival means and the pauperization of the natives. In addition to the diagnosis, this study also points out steps for the sustainable development of tourism cluster, which may simultaneously prevent the social and ecological degradation.

The outsourcing phenomenon has been increasingly receiving attention both from academic and practitioners communities; the focus of much of this research has been concentrated on understanding whether and what companies should outsource. The result of the research has lead towards the emergence of several process frameworks depicting the phases of the outsourcing process. It is commonly recognised that the outsourcing process consists of the preparation, vendor(s) selection, transition, management of relationship, and reconsideration phases. Each of the phases has been broke down in the serious of activities that an outsourcing company performs. At the same time, the phases received a flow of theoretical explanations. The outsourcing process seen from the outsourcer’s perspective seems to be relatively well understood. However, the outsourcing process involves engagement and interaction of minimum two organisations – the outsourcer and the vendor. Ironically, despite the research on the outsourcing process there is very little understanding of the issues from the vendor’s perspective. This shortcoming is a motivator for this paper. In the proposed paper the authors focus on the outsourcing process as seen by the vendors. A literature study method is used to frame the phases of the outsourcing process and describe the activities embedded in each of the phases. The vendor’s side of the outsourcing dyad is explained through existing body of knowledge that is related to the vendor’s value proposition. The authors then set those two perspectives against each other. This cross examination enables us to identify gaps in understanding the vendor’s way in the outsourcing process. The paper concludes by posing some research questions and propositions to motivate the vendor’s perspective research agenda in the outsourcing process.

Customers of the aerospace company studied act primarily as system integrators today. This means that the company studied is expected to take full responsibility for a component or sub-system, including developing new innovative technologies within their specializations. For a supplier, the global trends and general expectations of the industry may be reasonably clear, but how this should be translated to technology development is not necessarily a clear-cut process. This includes anticipating market trends, how the customers of the company are positioning themselves in relation to global trends and regulations, the overarching system architecture that could be chosen by an aircraft supplier, and various forms of possible collaboration driven by market forces and political arrangements. The difficulties for a company acting as a sub-supplier under these uncertain circumstances, to propose a logical and solid technology strategy are obviously not easily managed. This paper reports a case study on how selected aspects of technology management interact and how they shape the development and decision making processes within a particular company acting as component supplier in the aerospace sector. To explore the management of technology, focus group interviews were used. A total of seven groups were interviewed for approximately two hours each. For the composition of these groups, a purposeful homogeneous sampling strategy was chosen to find the people with the greatest insight on this topic and to focus on the variation in perspectives of internal organizations. The interviews were recorded and transcribed, informal methods for data reduction were used to condense the material, and the results and conclusions were presented to the participants and other interested parties at the company to improve clarity and eliminate error. The study explores a process of technology maturation and implementation. Experience gained from aspects such as identification, selection, planning, execution and introduction of new technology was discussed. The overall vision of the general management is translated into requirements and goals for new technology. This process is highly cross functional, with different organizational groups contributing in various ways to develop the technology. Functional aspects of technology development are an intricate part of the study; differing views on the advantages and disadvantages of current work practices are outlined.

Global outsourcing from the West to low-wage countries has been known to have focused primarily on low- and medium-value manufactured goods (e.g., shoes, toys, textile products, PCs, and home appliances). Some business executives now predict that in a not too distant future automobiles made in China and India are to be marketed to the US and other developed countries. The drive of low- wage countries to constantly advance their technological sophistication is clearly both evident and anticipated. If this trend is allowed to continue unabated, more industrial sectors of the West will suffer and the overall manufacturing base of the West will steadily decline. Are there ways to strengthen some manufacturing sectors of the West to slow down this erosion? This paper suggests a model, the TRANSFORM model, to selectively strengthen the high- value segment of the manufacturing base of the West. The model emphasizes nine specific strategies: (1) Triple our efforts in practicing the systematic methods of mining deep smarts;(2) Revisit and explore applicable literature to relentlessly obtain tacit personal knowledge, in addition to gathering explicit knowledge; (3) Acquire new insights by constantly reviewing, testing and modifying existing concepts, patterns, scenarios and knowledge rules; (4) Nurture innovative ideas through interactions in group settings by means of reviewing, sorting, grouping, experimenting, matching and integrating divergent and seemingly unrelated concepts, patterns and scenarios; (5) Select reasonable conceptual elements to steadily synthesize, reshape and improve; (6) Formulate inventive concepts for further testing and refinement;(7) Orient the innovative efforts to focus on developing novel manufacturing technologies and specialized production methodologies; (8) Refine and apply the supply chain strategies to facilitate the use of special manufacturing technologies in producing high-value goods in order to achieve economies of scope advantages;(9) Maintain a steady advancement of the distributed manufacturing base of the West, while realizing marketplace advantages in cycle time, product feature and competitiveness. This model emphasizes the application of innovations to transform the manufacture base of the West by selectively developing its high-value segments. The example of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is discussed to demonstrate the technical feasibility of putting together a sophisticated product with premium features in an optimized way by relying only on the skills and manufacturing capabilities of the West. As the West emphasizes the creation of customizable products with premium features and innovative manufacturing technologies, a dynamic equilibrium will be maintained; these new and advanced manufacturing technologies will feed into the leading edge of a “pipeline,” whereas the standardized and commoditized ones for making low and medium-value products will flow down the pipe and be applied by many low-wage manufacturers. By the time the world would see advanced airplanes of the787-type being made in China, India and other developing countries, the West should have been in a position to offer even newer and much more sophisticated products. It is within this dynamic equilibrium that the West would be able to maintain and expand its current lead in high-value manufacturing by applying the TRANSFORM model.

The focus of the work is the effective use and management of information to reduce the quality problem, thereby improving industrial competitiveness. This research has addressed the problems of assisting the product through the provision of advanced manufacturing-related information and of supporting the manufacturing engineer with information derived from the design stage. The business environments surrounding the global manufacturing industries are undergoing tremendous changes. With the increasingly free flow of capital, technology and human resources, the manufacturing industries in developing countries are rapidly expanding. They have huge cost advantages due to large production capacity and low labour cost. In response to the ever more severe global competition, the Japanese manufacturers are intensifying their effort to cut the manufacturing cost by implementing the following measures: establishing overseas manufacturing facilities, employing unskilled laborer instead of skilled laborer at the production line, outsourcing part of manufacturing process to overseas fabricators. However, the Japanese manufacturers start to experience number of quality problems that has never been a major concern before. These quality problems includes: increasing number of defective products, longer lead time from completion of product design to commencement of manufacturing, unmanufacturable or hard-to-manufacture product design. Preliminary investigation has indicated that those quality problems are caused by lack of appropriate and adequate information sharing between product designers and manufacturing engineer. Before the implementation of cost cutting measures, product designer and manufacturing engineer are working in close tie geographically and organizationally, manufacturing engineer generally had a profound knowledge about their products and informally feedback manufacturability information to product designer. Since this informal and implicit information sharing has been lost, more formal information sharing scheme has to be established. An appropriate information transformation is also necessary to enable mutual understandings. Therefore we set the purpose of research as to conceptualize, design and implement information transformation and sharing scheme between product designer and manufacturing engineer to improve production quality. Firstly, a quality management diagram to relate the lack of information and the quality problem is developed. The lack of information is categorised by the places where necessary information is lack (design or manufacture), the contents of lacking information and the necessary means of information transmission to complement lacking information. The quality problems occurring at a real manufacturing facility are analysed and classified into four categories: product defection, longer lead time, unmanufacturable product design, and complex manufacturing process. These categorised quality problems are related to the lack of information. Secondly, the reasons of lacking information are extracted, analysed and classified into primary, secondary and tertiary factors. As a preliminary trial to prove the effectiveness of information sharing and transformation, an information transformation system to convert the design relevant information generated by product design activities into the manufacturing relevant information has been implemented at a xenon lamp manufacturing line. The product defect is reduced by half at this trial although the only two kinds of information are supplemented. This research is going to be expanded to develop comprehensive information transmission and transformation system between product designer and manufacturing engineer.

Contrary to the homogeneous behavior with a traditional R&D intensity-oriented R&D strategy that enabled a high-technology miracle in the 1980s, Japan’s leading high-technology firms now demonstrate contrasting behavior, including (i) bipolarization between high-performance firms and stagnating ones, (ii) a clear contrast between a conspicuously high-level of R&D input and extremely low level of output, (iii) a?subsequent dramatic decline in the profitability of R&D, (iv) a contrast between vigorous external learning and clinging to the not invented here (NIH) syndrome, and (v) bipolarization of firm globalization. These observations prompt us the following hypotheses with respect to a survival strategy for high-technology firms toward a post-information society: (i) The substitution of a R&D output-oriented strategy for a R&D input-oriented strategy is indispensable, (ii) Shifting from an internal generation strategy to external acquisition efforts is essential for this substitution, and (iii) Such a shift is transforming Japan’s traditional technopreneurial structure, resulting in bipolarization of Japan’s leading firms having a homogeneous structure. Given the significance of such a bipolarization in innovation inducement and consequent global competitiveness structure, this paper attempts to demonstrate the foregoing hypotheses. Important implications obtained include : (i) in terms of correspondence to the transition to a post-information society, a bipolarization structure can be clearly observed in Japan’s leading high-technology firms, (ii) this provides a significant impact on global competitiveness, (iii) substitution from R&D intensity to operating income to R&D is indispensable for competition, (iv) shifting from internal generation of innovation to external acquisition efforts is essential, and, thus (v) constructing a co-evolutionary dynamism between heterogeneous firms is critical.

Many Japanese electric machinery firms can not made profit because of the fast price reduction. However, Canon has consistently kept high profitability and its operation income to sales (OI/S) has remained at the highest among Japan’s leading electric machinery firms. Many researchers have pointed out that the source of high profitability of Canon is its business model with a high-profit structure of office supplies in the business machines market. However, the profitability of business machine segment of Canon is much higher than the other rivals in the business machine market (Ricoh, Fuji Xerox, Epson, etc). Therefore it is insufficient to explain the high profitability of Canon only with the business model of office supplies. The difference between Canon and the rivals in the business machine market is that it has high market share in both copying machines and printers fields. Concerning the relationship between copying machines and laser beam printer (LBP), Canon has rapidly expanded its business, by building on existing core technologies in principle. Thereby, Canon has incrementally developed new technologies in related technology areas. Under current strong price competition, the methods by which the firms raise their profitability are accelerating cost reduction and slowing down the speed of sales price decreasing. Market learning is important to accelerate cost reduction. Creating new products which have new value and functionality matching the customer demand (i.e. functionality development) is important to increase sales price. Learning and functionality development can be attributed to technological diversification. Many studies have been made on the relation between technological diversification and innovative activities. However, there has been no study that tried to analyze the dynamism between technological diversification, learning, and functionality development. This study will demonstrate this dynamism by the case study of Canon’s copying machines and printers. First, we analyze this dynamism statistically by using the data of production, price, functionality and patent of copying machines and printers. Second, we analyze the learning process and the functionality development based on concrete examples. Finally, we simulate this dynamism by means of system dynamics approaches. This study provides important suggestions to the firm's strategy in accomplishing a high profitability.

Energy and forest sectors can be considered traditional and conservative industries whose willingness to innovate and change has been quite weak. This path dependent development has led them to s