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 struggle to increase the level of value-added in their production. The era of increasing interests towards biomass as raw material for bio-based products gives promising opportunities for these industries, however. At the moment already the interest towards bio-based fuels, energy and power is overwhelming which thus opens up promising possibilities for biomass owners such as forest products industry. If it does not take advantage of the situation there will probably be other industries to create new value creative business from the forest-based biomass. The forest industry has knowledge on global operations and on large scale industrial operations while the energy industry has the knowledge on making energy from various raw material bases (process knowledge) and on supplying energy to end users. In this paper we try to explore whether the complementary resources and knowledge base of the two industries enable innovative value creating mechanisms. Our data is from a three-round Delphi study that was performed in the end of 2006 complemented with expert interviews. The Delphi technique was chosen in order to bring the specialists of the industries together. The panelists included business managers and executives, and actors of universities, as well as representatives from joint industrial organizations of the industries under scope. The time scale in the Delphi survey covers years till 2015. Our analysis focused mainly on studying and identifying the most interesting and controversial issues that affect the future development of this business opportunity between biomass-intensive forest industry and evolving energy industry. The research results indicate that there are several hindering factors. To wit, the paper explores what are the possible challenges, threats and opportunities that the industries are confronted with if they would engage in the exploitation of renewable raw material in the interface of the forest and energy industries by opening up the evolving value chain of bioenergy. Based on the empirical data, we also attempt to identify what resources are needed in the future, and what are the most promising value creation possibilities that originate in the interfaces of these two traditional industries under scope.

This paper investigates the relation of research and development intensity to firm performance. We believe that this relation is strongly sector related as the logic of innovation differs radically between different industries. Pavitt taxonomy is used to classify different industries to more homogenous sectors. We use a large data set of public companies world wide over the 1996-2005 period. Interesting question is the delay between the R&D investment and its results. We assume that this lag is dependent on technological environment (technology regime, uncertainty, intensity) and hence differs between industry categories. Also there is reason to believe that the lag structures are different depending on performance measure used. The effects on growth are expected to have shorter time lag when compared to profitability measures. Our results imply how sectoral differences really exist in firm level R&D intensity as such, science based industries having the highest R&D intensity. Sectoral differences are also evidential when estimating the time lagged effect between R&D expenditures and performance of firm.

The need for a Management of Technology (MOT) Body-of-Knowledge (BoK) Framework which can be used as a basis for designing new graduate curricula in MOT as well as for the evaluation and possible certification/accreditation of existing MOT programs has been long recognized. In a previous paper, the authors presented the results of a two-step, web-based, survey conducted for the purpose of obtaining direct input from MOT stakeholders on the structure of such Framework. The survey results led to the composition and ranking of importance of MOT Knowledge Groups and Knowledge Disciplines, and the comparison of the resulting MOT BoK Framework to the results of a previously conducted analysis of program content in 148 Universities which participated in an Engineering and Technology Management (ETM) graduate education program survey. In this new paper the authors analyze the important differences between MOT stakeholders’ perceived level of importance to MOT graduate education of certain disciplines, and the lower relevance they are given in many engineering management-oriented programs. These differences are a strong reflection that the MOT community considers MOT to be of critical importance from the strategic point of view as contrasted by the greater emphasis on operational issues and efficiency of Engineering Management oriented programs. This is the major distinguishing feature between MOT and Engineering Management and one which needs to be taken into account in the review and formulation of Management of Technology graduate level curricula. The paper also accentuates the urgent need for an accreditation/certification model to better support the impending European Union’s changes in higher education and the global impact on technology management brought about by the current dynamics of globalization forces. It ends by proposing a Framework-based model of a MOT Masters Degree level curriculum to be used as a basis for designing new graduate curricula in MOT as well as for the evaluation and possible certification/accreditation of existing MOT programs.

This project is a product of the identification of the necessities of the Forestry Laboratory of Environment Faculty which has the responsibility to facilitate the seed recourses for the development and investigation of students and teacher’s practices. Recourses have been affected because the major part of they need a process of information’s systematization and of the knowledge obtained in the Laboratory. This process develops according to an organizational model, a development methodology and a research which allow us to detect the critic point or nodes of the Laboratory processes. In first instance, when we have defined these points, we make an analysis of the organization. Then we define the actors and their roles with assistance of Knowledge Maps, Detection of Practice Communities and the definition of the Process so that we obtain the Knowledge Management Model for our Knowledge Portal. The nodes identified and the subsystems proposed for the systematization of their processes are six, respectively: 1) The handling of the seeds information had been made manually by means of record cards. Seed’s Subsystem. 2) The difficulty to consult and access to the information that the seeds have generated the necessity of a Monographic Report of Species. 3) The student’s work inside the laboratory has been impeded because it lacks of guides who allow the best use of the recourses. It has provoked time and recourses losses. Guide’s Subsystem for Analysis and Essays. 4) The recourses management of the laboratory as the practice instruments has been made manually and it has provoked the material loss, difficulty in the search and their assignation. Recourse’s Management Subsystem. 5) The access to the written works, investigations, documents and articles made in the laboratory about seeds by the students, teachers and investigators disperse in different places as the library, magazines and dynamic information. They don’t have a centralized place to consult them. Storage’s Subsystem. 6) The action field of the Forestry in the Average Education is of low level because the students who conforms this community don’t have the opportunity to know the basic information to this topic. Support to Middle Education Subsystem. When we have obtained the Knowledge Management Model, we defined the subsystem for facility the nodes fixation to develop and then carry them to Web Ambient which permits us the communication and feedback of information with the system actor like teachers, students, investigators and Middle Education Organizations and Pregrado.

The present article recollects the sprouting of the Amil Corporate University and the bases that supports its activities. It shows the relevance of the investment in the process of continuing education inside the company as foundation for the development of the intellectual capacity in the Knowledge Age. The beginning of the activities of Amil Corporate University occurred in the decade of 90th`s with the objective to construct and to spread knowledge. This initiative has contributed with the formation and development of professionals abilities and techniques mainly in four segments detached here: training and development; internal marketing; quality of life and social responsibility. With a diversified offer, the activities of the Corporate University enclose courses, lectures, meeting/meetings, seminaries and social action. This education of the company reaches everybody that belong to the universe of Amil Group, extending itself in society as a whole. Founded in 1972, with a 100% national capital, AMIL spun from a small-sized well-intentioned company to the largest private maternity entity in the State of Rio Janeiro in just 5 years. Its entrance in the area of group medicine occurred in 1978 and, in 1982, AMIL was already considered one of the best health care companies in the country. The reason for this enormous success lies in health management in that it analyzes, maps and treats risks, therefore preventing and controlling illnesses and guaranteeing the best quality of life to its members. Nowadays, the AMIL Group is among the four biggest private health care companies in the country, counting on more than 1.6 million beneficiaries. In order to have the best health management for clients adequately aligned with the company's purposes, it is imperative to count on highly trained professionals and a fine, perfectly tuned structure. Amil Corporate University was created in 1990 as one of the first schools of administration in the market in Brazil. From the start we have been driven by our conviction that knowledge is the foundation upon which to construct a better world, and we have been working relentlessly to promote education, learning, relationships and the exchange of information. We hope that this vision is inspiring, and makes people believe more and more in their dreams and believe in education as a tool to fulfill them.

A company’s future prospect for economic development and social progress lies within with its executive education system. In pursing these goals, it must be accepted that higher educational institutions have a major role to play in ensuring that a culture of innovation in an organization and the training of people in management of technology is a critical success factor for a competitive world. So that an organization could attend to his ecosysteme´s changes, it needs to live punctual training in accordance with the nature of the problems that is arising. Nevertheless, the organization to support his course and systematically to increase his competitiveness with global vision, it needs to assume a training with proactive attitude of value added towards the wished future. The authors feel that Mexican’s companies are moving towards the transformation from having a competitive advantage in its workforce, to a competitive advantage based more upon the mobilization of knowledge and the development of high technology projects. In order to make a contribution to the competitiveness of the country, the authors suggest a methodology based in systems thinking as a way to training innovator´s agents for the organization.

In the business world, innovation is seen as the best alternative for surviving in a market which is forever more competitive. In order to ensure the continued innovation of processes and products, organizations are beginning to consider that investing in their most valuable asset, the human resources, is essential. At the same time, there is a new form of education propagating in the business environment, the Corporate Universities (CU’s). These institutions offer means to acquire new qualifications and skills for all organization levels. Therefore, in order to verify the reality of Corporate Universities in Santa Catarina, Brazil and to compare them with North American CU practices, this study is characterized as a qualitative research with exploratory and descriptive approaches. For this, five CU’s were analyzed in Santa Catarina, Brazil: “Sadia SA”, with headquarters in São Paulo, “Fundição Tupy”, “Datasul” and “Tigre”, with headquarters in Joinville, and “Softway”, with headquarters in Florianópolis, as well as the Hamburger University in USA. The research indicates that the survival and integration of an individual in the job market is related to several factors, which range from that individual’s ability, skills and qualifications to the awareness that continuous learning is needed. It was also verified that the adoption of Corporate University practices must be carefully managed as well as all the processes related with its implementation. This occurs due to the fact that maintaining its concept requires the creation of a structure, which offers conservation and fomenting mechanisms for new qualifications for all its stakeholders, as well as partnerships with other teaching institutes and regulatory entities, providing flexible and continued education aligned with the strategies adopted by the company.

The study focuses on cross-national adoption of innovation and explores the influence of cultural dimensions on the time evolution of national innovation adoption. The research on dynamics of the phenomenon of takeoff in a cross-national setting remains largely missing in the existing literature, and therefore, this paper empirically explores cultural dimensions and whether they have relationship with the extent of takeoff time or not. Furthermore, the paper reports results on the moderating effect of national wealth, population density and illiteracy rate. Finally, the paper discusses practical implications of the findings. The empirical study investigates 137 national innovation adoption series by using the method of regression analysis. The results confirm that cultural values have effects on takeoff time. The study further finds that cultural dimensions have more influence on takeoff time in countries with highly developed economy, dense population and low illiteracy rate. The paper provides evidence that the influence of cultural dimensions may be more complex than earlier has been considered. Keywords: takeoff point, adoption of innovations, moderation effect, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions

University R&D approach, entrepreneurship and industry relationship have become a relevant approach in regional development. Recent literature has addressed these aspects from various points of view. A recent paper (Rothaermel, 2006) identified 150 articles in academic journals discussing just the university entrepreneurship issue in the past 20 years. Extensive literature has covered also other aspects. The objective of this paper is to compare the approach of two university models. That of the universities of the State of Florida and that of the East of Spain (Valencia region) universities. The analysis has been focused in the values and mission of each university as well as the study of the support infrastructure. The work has been based in a number of interviews held with the responsible staff in different areas of all involved universities. This is part of a PhD thesis being developed by the author. The main findings of the paper are basically the following. Differences in the managerial structure; different approaches of the technology transfer offices (TTO) and finally, the frecuent creation, start and manegement of Science Parks. In general it can be advanced that the role of an industry focused TTO is fundamental in the final results of the university relationships with its business environment. Although financial aspects have not been covered in the paper, there are substantial differences found in both models.

Co-evolution of integrating global business processes driven by technology, increasing knowledge intensity in all human enterprises, shrinking span between R&D and its commercialization have brought business and technology "incubation" at the centre stage of competitive strategy for sustainable economic growth and wealth generation. Incubation derives from Latin incubare, "to lie upon", which may mean warming up or nurturing. If the ideation process were to be taken as the mental form of incubation, then the incubation could be traced back to the birth of human civilization. But the recognition of incubation activity as a strategic business tool began to surface around the middle of the last century. The first known incubator with modern attributes is credited to have appeared in Batavia, New York in 1959. Since then variety of incubators have grown throughout the United States and Europe. In Asia, incubators have rapidly appeared like in China, Japan, Korea and Singapore in recent years. After having observed the experience of advanced economies, India began to promote incubation activity since the beginning of 1980s. Now with the implementation of Special Economic Zone concept as a preferred growth strategy the incubation activity is likely to accelerate. Investigating the different regions with the diverse cultural background for developing business and technology attracts our interest. How are the approaches to creating and establishing incubators in India and Austria? Austria, though a far smaller country in terms of physical and size of population, both India and Austria have approximately 80 incubators each in operation or under development. While India initiated incubation program in the beginning of 1980s and Austria began earnestly in 1990s the rate of growth in Austria has been much faster and density of incubation activity much higher. Majority of Indian incubators are focused on ICT, the Austrian incubators occupy a wider technological space. However, the success rate of Indian companies, born of incubation, in terms of global impact on industry is staggeringly high. It is interesting to note that the four most successful and influential incubators are located in the Bangalore region of Karnataka. In this paper we intend to explore the following questions: * How and when the incubation activity began in India and Austria? * What branches of technology are the focus of incubation activity in the two countries? * What is the support system? Public / Private? Venture capital, etc. * What is the policy framework? * What are the regional specificities of Bangalore region on the one hand and Graz-Linz on the other? * What are the typical problems and prospects? * Which future trends can be detected? In order to understand the organizational aspects and operational mechanisms it is important to focus on cultural dimensions and delineate differences and possible learning lessons from Indian and European experiences.

Contrary to its long-lasting economic stagnation during the “lost decade” in the 1990s, Japan is expected to be “flying again.” This anticipation can largely be attributed to the activation of Japan’s indigenous virtuous cycle between technological innovation and economic development. Despite many handicaps, Japan achieved a conspicuous technological advancement and subsequent productivity increase by devoting technology substitution for constrained production factors such as labors in the 1960s and energy in the 1970s. Such efforts enabled Japan to improve its institutional systems essential for its technological innovation, which in turn induced further innovation. Thus, Japan constructed a sophisticated co-evolutionary dynamism between innovation and institutional systems. However, its economic stagnation in an information society in the 1990s demonstrates that this dynamism may stagnates if institutional systems can not adapt to innovations. Noteworthy surge in new innovations in recent years in leading edge activities of Japan’s certain high-technology firms can be attributed to the co-evolution between indigenous strength developed in an industrial society and effects of the cumulative learning from their competitors in an information society. This co-evolution emerges as a hybrid management by fusing “East” (indigenous strength) and “West” (learning from and corresponding to digital economy) leading Japan’s firms to be more resilient against ubiquitous economy where seamless, on demand and open-sourcing are essential requirements. Empirical analysis is focused on the elucidation of the co-evolutionary domestication leading to the note hybrid management fusing East and West.

Facility layout problem is one of the important issues affecting the productivity of manufacturing systems. This problem deals with the determination of optimum arrangement of manufacturing facilities with respect different layout patterns. The multi-row layout pattern is an arrangement fashion in which the manufacturing facilities are laid in a planar area. In this paper, a mixed-integer non-linear mathematical programming model is proposed for determining the optimum layout of machines in a two-dimensional area. The advantages of the proposed model as compared to the models existing in the literature are due to the consideration of the following aspects: (a) production capacity of machines, (b) multiple machines of each type (machine redundancy), (c) processing route of parts, (d) dimensions of machines. A technique is proposed to linearize the formulated non-linear model. A typical problem has been presented to show the effectiveness of the solution obtained from the proposed model compared to solution obtained from process layout.

Cellular manufacturing system (CMS) which is based on the concept of group technology (GT) has been recognized as an efficient and effective way to improve the productivity in a factory. In recent years, there have been continuous research efforts to study different facet of CMS. Most of them concentrated on distinguishing the part families and machine cells either simultaneously or individually with the objective of minimizing intercellular and intracellular part movements. This is known as machine-part grouping problem (MPGP) which is a crucial process while designing CMS. Nevertheless, in reality some components may not be finished within only one cell, they have to travel to another cell(s) for further operation(s). Under this circumstance, intercellular part movement will occur. Different order/sequence of machine cells allocation may result in different total intercellular movement distance unit. It should be noted that if the production volume of each part is very large, then the total number of intercellular movement will be further larger. Therefore, the sequence of machine cells is particularly important in this aspect. With this consideration, the main aim of this work is to propose two-stage approach for solving cell formation problem as well as cell layout problem. The first stage is to identify machine cells and part families, which is the essential part of MPGP. The work in second stage is to carry out a macro-approach to study the cell formation problem with consideration of machining sequence. The impact of the sequencing for allocating the machine cells on minimizing intercellular movement distance unit will be investigated in this stage. The problem scope, which is a MPGP together with the background of cell layout problem (CLP), has been identified. Two mathematical models are formulated for MPGP and CLP respectively. The primary assumption of CLP is that it is a linear layout. The CLP is considered as a quadratic assignment problem (QAP). As MPGP and QAP are NP-hard, genetic algorithm (GA) is employed as solving algorithm. GA is a popular heuristic search technique and has proved superior performance on complex optimization problem. In addition, an industrial case study of a steel member production company has been employed to evaluate the proposed MPGP and CLP models, and the computational results are presented.

The production of metal tools for the fabrication of composite parts during the early stages of design and production is prohibitively expensive and time consuming. These tools are fabricated by a combination of manufacturing processes such as welding, casting and machining. Rapid Prototyping (RP) is an emerging technology offering low-cost solutions in product design, analysis, tooling and manufacturing. RP systems can produce parts of complex designs in limited quantities in a relatively short period of time, as compared to conventional fabrication methods. The paper presents a methodology by which composite lay-up tools can be rapidly and economically produced for the fabrication of fiber reinforced composite parts

We present an analytical approach for estimating the expected time for an automated material handling system (AMHS) to respond to move requests at loading stations in a vehicle-based, unidirectional, closed-loop AMHS. The expected response times are important for estimating the expected work-in-process (WIP) levels at the loading stations for design purposes, and for evaluating the performance of the AMHS as delayed response can impact the production cycle times. The analysis is based on a large-scale model, requires standard solvers, and provides a very fast and reasonably accurate alternative to high fidelity simulation. It is intended to support early stage of fab design/redesign, allowing engineers to examine many different options before committing to the time and expense of simulation. The expected response time approximation is validated by comparing the analytical model to the simulation results using a SEMATECH 300mm hypothetical fab data set.

Standards have made an essential positive contribution to the international success of German capital goods. The Institute for Human Factors and Technology Management (IAT) of the University of Stuttgart and the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO) have investigated the question of whether standards are actually helpful or rather an impediment to international services. The objective of the study was to develop recommendations for the use of standards in international services. The high export quota of German industrial goods manufacturers results in a widely distributed population of installed machines world-wide. The manufacturers also offer services along with the material goods, usually to extend the useful life and/or intensify the degree of utilisation of the machines. Since the services relate directly to the installed base of machines, most of the services offered by capital goods manufacturers have an international character. For this reason, machine manufacturers are especially suitable for studying the standards used in activities for the internationalisation of services. So far it has not been clear whether service-related standards would also support the international activities of German manufacturers of capital goods in a similar way as with material goods. The subject area of standards in international service markets is very complex and there has been little research to date. Case studies based on a semi-standardised interview guideline offered an opportunity to go further into the complex subject matter. In the interviews, the goals in using standards and the embodiments of the standards used were explored on the background of company-specific and environmental parameters. The study focussed on the objectives pursued with the standards and the forms of standards used. Standards may occur in a multitude of embodiments. In order to give a structure to the field of investigation, the standards were classified. Some exemplary criteria for classification are the form of documentation, the level of obligation or the scope of validity of a standard. Standards were considered both in the area of the manufacturers’ service management and in individual services. The detail analysis was made for three forms of service: consulting, technical services and training. The study covers the scope and the form in which standards govern areas of service management and the individual services considered. Within the field of service management, the standards used by the enterprise for development and design, quality management and controlling of services are explored. For the services included in the detail analysis, standards for offers and service providing are studied. Examples of standards included in the detail analysis are: work procedures, checklists and job profiles. The analysis of the case studies was made in an aggregated manner. Based on the individual enterprise’s situation, it was possible to compare the objectives and forms of the standards used for services of German capital goods manufacturers. This allows, for example, making an assessment of which form of standard is used for which purpose by companies providing international services. The anonymous made results of the case studies have been published as a short study.

Ayurvedic (indigenous) medicine system, which has its roots in the Asian region, is a science of healing both the physical body and the minds of humans. This indigenous medicinal system uses thousands of varieties of Herbs, starting from leaves to roots to prepare its medicines, which is a result of accumulated knowledge and experience over centuries. There are various ways of extracting the medicinal values from the herbal remedies in this indigenous science, and there are many varieties of medicines used starting from herbal drinks to balms (ointments). This research mainly focuses on herbal wines, which is commonly known as “Arishta” in Sanskrit. World's emerging trends towards self medication expands the available opportunities for the local herbal wine manufacturing industry to succeed. Having already opened up opportunities, and also, while benefiting from natural herbs and well experienced physicians within the country, Sri Lanka's herbal wine manufacturing industry is still lagging behind. Therefore, this research investigates why Sri Lankan herbal wine manufacturing industry is not a key contributor to the national GDP, even after having a huge demand for herbal products in both domestic and foreign markets. As a solution to this problem, the research delivers a strategic framework for the local herbal wine manufacturers to be used in their business. The exact standards expected by the end users in both domestic and foreign markets were gathered and analyzed through questionnaires and interviews, and the practical aspects in herbal wine manufacturing were gathered through personal interviews carried out with the experts in the indigenous medicine field and visits to the herbal wine manufacturing companies in Sri Lanka such as Link Natural Products Ltd. and Yakkala Siddhayurveda. Analyzing these, the factors creating competitive advantages for the manufacturers were identified, and the reasons for the local herbal wine manufacturers for not obtaining them were investigated. The framework resulted by analyzing the above factors, is designed in a way that the local herbal wine manufacturers can incorporate it into their business to develop their competitive advantages, and fill the gap between the world's existing demand and current supply, and ultimately aiming to develop the country's economy as a whole.

The management of quality and quality control is a consideration in all industries. The ISO 9000 standard defines a management system framework which includes the necessary and sufficient elements for the systematic management of quality. Some organizations experience positive results from implementing an ISO 9000 based quality management system while others do not. Given its widespread use and the economic implications of ineffective implementation, a study methodology is proposed that analyzes both the implementation process steps and the performance of system elements after certification. The methodology will involve combining publicly available business performance data and survey results to characterize the determinants of success for ISO 9000 certification of small businesses in the electronics industry.

Taiwan is second only to US in global IC design industry. Now, the IC design industry in Taiwan faces the challenges from China and India and how to enhance the competitiveness is an important issue to Taiwan government and industry. In this paper, we will make productivity analysis of Taiwan IC design companies. This research is aimed at top IC design companies listed in Taiwan stock market. First, go on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with two input variables and one output variable from the financial reports. Then, we use the CCR results to conduct window analysis to have productivity trends from 1999 to 2005. Besides, we adopt Malmquist index to measure effectiveness change in the time period. We will compare the results between window analysis and Malmquist index to have more information to explain the productivity trends of Taiwan IC design companies. Furthermore, we will link the productivity changes to company strategies. Research findings would be helpful for IC companies to make strategic plans for their future developments.

In the past seven years, the Taipei City Government has made efforts to transform itself into an e-government and to create a digital environment for businesses and citizens. Thus, the Taipei city has initiated the “M-Taipei” project by adopting Wi-Fi technology among other famous cities in the world. The government employed a “build and operate” (BO) model tender project with the Q-ware Corp. in September 2004. After the implementation phase of this project, the authorities began cooperating with TCA (Taipei Computer Association) to set up Wireless Broadband Promotion Association to deliver public services and application services to the citizens, such as Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), Wireless Campus, M-medicine, Culture Express, and so on. The Wi-Fi network can accommodate a variety of application services due to its ample capacity. Since the new services formed within the government to call for collaboration among the various departments and agencies as an industrial alliance, there are several dimensions and more complicated problems can be discussed under the integration of organizations. In general, the number of Wi-Fi users can increase quickly by providing exclusive public services over the network, so this study interviews the authorities to demonstrate the eco-system of this industry. Thus, this study builds an evaluative framework of innovation system to explore the “M-Taipei” project, and to find out some critical factors about industrial development and social impacts. Since the framework include three dimension , the policy innovation?the framework of industrial development and the development brings social impacts, that may demonstrate the key points and mechanisms that determines the uniqueness of Taipei city and intends to generate practical suggestions for a successful strategy to deliver services to citizens. Then this study discusses and gives assistance to deliver killer applications and the innovative public services in strategic approaches. In addition, the comparison in different projects between Taipei and other cities (Yokosuka City in Japan, East Manchester, Philadelphia, Singapore) that provides different experience to other municipalities that adopted private cooperation in city development to achieve the goal of wireless city.

Taiwan's government as many countries has faced an economic shift from manufacturing sectors to service sectors and therefore this paper introduces and discusses an ongoing WiMAX project. WiMAX is a wireless technology that provides broadband connection over long distances following the trend from previously using fixed lines to now using mobile capability; it provides new opportunities for economic growth. The goal of this paper is to review how and why WiMAX is a national program based on a new service innovation model that helps managers to consider the development of service innovation both in the industry level and firm level. This paper provides secondary data to describe the challenges of the government and the breakthrough of the WiMAX program.

Technology clusters attracted attention from both academic researchers and policy-makers in recent decades with recognition that clustering is one of the key drivers for regional development. The existing literature indicates that the knowledge spillovers facilitated by the mobility of inventors play a positive role in the development of clusters. The questions remain as how the patterns of innovator mobility change over time under different stages of cluster progression, and whether the dynamics of inventor movements indicate the future state of the cluster. Using patent authorship data, we construct networks of inventors’ movements within two different telecom clusters, NJ and TX. Based on the network analysis results and interviews with key inventors of the networks, we observe the evolvements of inventor mobility networks while the clusters go through different stages of their lifecycles, and discuss how the dynamics of inventor networks reflect the changes in economic or social conditions of the clusters over time.

The Gulf Coast is facing significant challenges in rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. Prior to the storm, the region was sluggish in its attempt at economic development. After the storm, the challenges are even greater. Post disaster perception has severely harmed the bread-and-butter industry of the area: tourism. As a result, the region must take inventory of its intellectual assets in order to determine new areas for economic development. This paper first discusses the importance of absorptive capacity in economic development. It then presents results from a technology mining study conducted of the intellectual assets (publications and patents) along what is known as the I-10 Corridor in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. These results reveal indicators of the economic development struggle of the region. More importantly, it reveals the technology areas, largely economically untapped, where the region exhibits strong research capabilities and educational focus, indicating high levels of absorptive capacity, which makes them areas prime for economic development. In addition, the paper demonstrates how technology mining can be used as a tool to aid in economic development decision-making.

This research aims to analyze the critical linkages between policy tools and the requirements of industrial innovation system. Particularly, a service approach of innovation strategy, namely, the IIS (innovation intensive service) platform, is used as an enabler for the industrial specialization of manufacturing industry. Globalization and proliferation of product knowledge in knowledge-based economy demands a new approach for industrial specialization, where integration of systems knowledge is pivotal in controlling information trafficking and management. With this perspective, we construct a specialization model enabled by IIS platform that depicts the inter-linkages among six innovation types (product, process, market, organization, structure, and investment) and eight specialization strategies (R&D, marketing, market diversity, production, regional clustering, technology, investment portfolio, and innovation services). Starting from customized services, this institutional framework will enable a contextual understanding of the transition from different innovation types into specific industrial specialization. The model also develops a strategic analysis by the firm-level IIS Matrix, which will help to deduce critical elements of industrial environment and technological system at the industry level by strategic positioning in the firm level. The requirements of industrial environment and technological system for developing specialization strategies will be consolidated into the industrial innovation system by using the IIS approach; and twelve policy tools respectively in the supply, demand, and environmental side will be analyzed by expert questionnaires to construct the correlation between policy tools and industrial environment, or technology system. Not only does the result of study provide a mechanistic understanding of industrial innovation system for manufacturing specialization, it also gives a guideline of strategic policy allocation for policymakers.

Evaluation is a key process in planning and implementing R&D programs in Korea. Evaluation is also performed for the purpose of allocating limited resources to R&D programs. At the national S&T planning stage, various evaluation methodologies are used to identify the best technology alternatives or develop S&T policy. For the newly proposed R&D programs, preliminary feasibility studies are performed to decide budget using multi-criteria decision making approach. Once the program is launched, the annual R&D evaluation process is activated for the program to monitor the program’s performance. Continuous efforts are being made to develop performance indicators reflecting the characteristics of R&D programs. This paper is on the preliminary feasibility study which has been recently employed for R&D program budgeting process. The preliminary feasibility study includes technical feasibility, economic assessment, and policy analysis. The purpose of a preliminary feasibility study is to verify the feasibility of large public R&D programs through technical, economic and policy analysis. The system was introduced in 1999 for large scale SOC projects by the Ministry of Planning and Budget (MPB), and the target boundary of the feasibility study has been broadened to the R&D programs beginning 2006. Preliminary feasibility studies have been tried in 2005 for the purpose of developing general guidelines. The analysis has been performed for technical feasibility, economic merit, and policy implication. Preliminary feasibility studies employed AHP on the results of the three analyses. Recommendations are given as a result of the study through AHP, and approval or rejection of the newly proposed R&D programs is basically dependent on the result. For the purpose of setting up a preliminary feasibility study system, we developed ‘General Guidelines for Preliminary Feasibility Studies’. The guideline includes general procedures and methodologies for analysis. In 2006, the standard guidelines for preliminary feasibility study for each R&D program category were developed. The standard guidelines were developed for industrial R&D programs, public health and welfare R&D programs, and basic R&D programs. The guidelines explain the methodologies to measure social and economic impacts for each R&D program.

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to explore challenges and opportunities in knowledge management research trends in China. Design/methodology/approach-After introduction, the literature review presents the status quo of China knowledge management (KM) research from a worldwide perspective and China economy today. Then the paper explains theoretical analysis of KM development and future trend in the west. The third part of literature review addresses debate of KM practices followed by the way how KM trend is discussed in western research. Methodology of this paper is guided by valuable KM trend and debate analysis approaches. Empirical evidences from the journal literature, the websites of consultancy companies, and in the presentation of research centres are examined. Focus groups in China KM research and practitioner centre are applied. A triangulated methodology include data from two well-known management database searching results for ‘China’ and ‘Knowledge Management’; two KM surveys in China and other website and journals and two focus groups in China. Findings-The paper is an initial exploration of the KM research trends in China. The research explains the opportunities and challenges in front of KM researchers and provides useful guidance for KM practice in China. In general, China has relatively newly developed KM awareness. The importance of KM, however, has not yet been fully explored in research. One the one hand, the lack of access to China practitioners, the scarceness of related comparative study and the arguable KM domain are three major reasons that lead to insufficient research. On the other hand, given the rapid development of China economy today, there are questions and phenomena with specific Chinese characters need to be examined from KM perspective. Two major challenges of China economy, i.e. reforming in the process of development, and the privatization as well as the regional difference need to be reflected in China KM research. Comparative approaches in the research are needed. Although KM is arguably undergoing fast development in recently years and China has becoming one of the important spotlights, China related KM research is still at its very early stage. Challenges and opportunities are presented for further research guidance. Originality/value- This paper shows that KM research in China has its own characters if compare with the west. Directions and opportunities for China related KM researches are discussed by a triangulated approach. The findings present future trend of KM research in China and assists practitioner to reimpose knowledge manage practice. This paper suggests important areas that researchers need to address as new challenges and opportunities in the KM trends in China context. Keywords: China, knowledge management Paper type: research paper

Knowledge is considered as an economic driver in today’s economy, it has become a commodity, a resource that can be packed and transferred. This evolution has been enhanced by the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) that have reduced the cost of gathering and disseminating knowledge. Most notably reducing transaction costs between companies and other actors, especially in areas such as information search and buying have achieved the contribution of knowledge to innovation. The objective of this paper is providing a comprehensive review of the scope, trends and major actors in the development and use of methods to manage innovation in a knowledge-driven economy. The paper will develop and propose a model that correlates Innovation Management Techniques (IMTs) aiming the improvement of firm competitiveness with knowledge management. It will specifically focus on those IMTs for which knowledge is a relevant part of the innovation process. The methodology followed in this research is based both on an exhaustive literature research and a survey carried out of a balanced sample (geographically and activity wise) of firms, academic centres, business schools, consulting firms, business support organisations and government agencies. The research was financed by the European Commission and was carried out among respondents from the 15 Member States of the European Union, Japan and the United States. In total, some 433 completed questionnaires were returned. The information collected from the survey were completed via phone interviews with the most representative stakeholders, which went into more detail on certain issues of relevance for the study and clarified some outstanding questions. Our research study concludes that knowledge-driven economy affects the innovation process and the innovation approach. The traditional idea that innovation is based upon research (technology-push theory) and interaction between firms and other actors is replaced by current social network theory of innovation, where knowledge plays a crucial role in fostering innovation. In a knowledge-driven economy, innovation has become a relevant tool for competitiveness in a global world. Thus, organisations large and small have started to re-evaluate their products, services, and even their corporate culture in an attempt to maintain their competitiveness in the actual global markets. More forward-thinking companies have recognised that only through such root and branch reform can they hope to survive to a global increasing competition. Simultaneously, organisations in both public and private sectors have launched initiatives to develop methodologies and tools to support business innovation management. Higher education establishments, business schools and consulting companies are developing innovative and adequate methodologies and tools, while public authorities are designing and setting up education and training schemes aimed to disseminate best practice among all kinds of businesses.

Outsourcing and/or offshoring production and procurement has been a major theme of the globalization debate in recent years. Internationalizing R&D activities could be the logical next step. A growing stream of literature emerges that stresses the importance of harvesting creativity across the globe, which typically requires “being there.” Foreign subsidiaries tap local pools of expertise and make them accessible for the multinational company (MNC). Hence, these innovation engagements of foreign subsidiaries can generate competitive advantage for the MNC as a whole. To achieve this ambitious goal they need to become embedded in host country flows of valuable knowledge. While spatial proximity is almost a precondition, important cultural and social barriers remain. The literature has identified these frictional losses from operating out of the home market environment as “liability of foreignness” (Hymer, 1976; Zaheer, 1995). In this analysis we focus on these “stranger in a strange land” effects on the innovation activities of multinational corporations abroad. More precisely, we derive potential stumbling blocks during the innovation process conceptually, so that targeted management recommendations can be derived. We suggest that liability of foreignness may stifle innovation projects and lead to bad project choices and/or budget overruns. We test these hypotheses empirically for a large sample of roughly 1,000 firms with innovation activities in Germany. We find that foreign innovation engagements do not stumble at the mobilization stages, but rather when projects have to be selected, planned and managed. We argue that multinational companies have no problems in spotting worthwhile innovation impulses abroad. The effects from a lack of local embeddedness kick in once these ideas have to be prioritized and aligned with resources. We suspect that project priorities and resource planning follow general guidelines of the multinational corporation. These shared procedures provide consistency within the MNC but limit the flexibility of foreign subsidiaries to bring their innovation initiatives fully in line with host country best practices. As a result they are more often forced to recalibrate projects or necessary resources. We build on these results to derive management recommendations for countervailing strategies.

Natural and man-made disasters have gained attention at all levels of policy-making particularly following the sobering lessons of Hurricane Katrina, one of the most significant natural disasters in the United States in recent history. The inter-organizational activities for emergency management generally include those associated with mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery from such incidents. Depending on the nature of the incident, failure to successfully complete the activities can pose severe danger and risk to the community at-large and the personnel involved in the emergency response activities. Furthermore as our technology develops and expands in its applicability, experience shows that we create sophisticated systems and organizations for managing systems and tasks related to the operations in emergency response organizations. Analysis and investigations of the response activities and mechanisms following Hurricane Katrina, seem to indicate systemic flaws that existed even prior to the disaster. Perhaps, what is even more disturbing is the observation that the lessons learned from Katrina were similar to those mentioned after Hurricane Andrew, which occurred ten years earlier. What can be done to minimize the impacts of disasters by improving the emergency response operations? This study seeks to explore the structural mechanisms in this area further as it applies to emergency operations, in terms of interactive complexity of tasks (interdependence/ linearity of tasks) and coupling of parts (tight/ loose). Preliminary observations seem to indicate that emergency response organizations lay heavy emphasis on knowledge management (KM) as a concept, and the use of KM tools, mechanisms and processes that are currently available in the organization. The purpose of this research study would be to try and examine how KM could be used effectively to reduce the risk of failures in emergency management, and if certain KM mechanisms or technologies could be harnessed proactively in this effort. This study is based on a review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies of disaster operations, knowledge management, complex systems, and system accidents. Current research has attempted to touch upon broad concepts that apply to emergency environments in different organization settings, but may not have reached the heart of the issues that we contemplate in this study. This work will provide emergency managers useful insight and guidelines to enable effective decision-making in dynamic and risky environments.

R&D, entrepreneurship and innovation are surely linked concepts. The general idea is that, to have actual innovative outcomes, R&D projects should be managed based on pre-existing individual and organizational entrepreneurial culture and attitude. On the one hand, we consider entrepreneurial behavior as the search for both new technological and new commercial venture opportunities. Is the clear acceptance of risk taking, but also the clear expectation of Schumpeterian extraordinary profits. On the other hand, investments on R&D projects are the very crystallization of deliberate and organized efforts to really reach acknowledged economic results from these new ventures. Firms that work closely to these dimensions should, thus, easily reach innovation and competitiveness. Brazilian reality, however, indicates that this sort of R&D-entrepreneurship-innovation tripod seems to have some important gap. Very low levels of R&D expenditures (something around 1% of GDP over the last decades) coped with an entrepreneurial culture that barely is focused on opening new companies (with no new ventures!) completely blast the expectation on having technological innovation and socio-economic development together. Therefore, where is the missing link? Based on the national science and technology statistics and on a recent field research made over 450 Brazilian businessmen, this paper aims to make some light on one possible explanation for the above mentioned gap. The low level of both R&D expenditures and innovative outcomes seems to be directly related to the absence of an innovative culture in what one should call “the Brazilian Businessmen DNA”. Looking closely, we found that most of Brazilian entrepreneurs are only focused on operational management practices as very drivers for running their business. They surely try to align their business strategy with marketing, operations, financial, or HR strategies. Even more, they work improvising, making gimmicks and praying on a sort of “the Brazilian Way” of behavior. What they rarely do is to align business and innovation strategies. Whenever they create “new business”, they make it based on on-going already established and successful ventures, where risks are already known. The result seems to be obvious: to compete they have to lower their prices instead of adding new value to their products and process. This tends to reduce profitability instead of making new profits. Brazilian entrepreneurs, though, work only to make “one business else” then to make “one new business”. In this behavioral pattern, innovation is undermined. Without stronger innovative strategic goals, Brazilian companies seem to perceive less importance on increasing their R&D expenditures. The general result, though, is the very low level of R&D efforts which leads to very low level of development indicators, such as per capita GDP.

Knowledge Intensive Business Service (KIBS) industries are now taking a more proactive role in the economy. Among them Management Consulting (MC) has an outstanding function in national economies since it has a great contribution to improving the performance of businesses and knowledge and experience diffusion. As a result, MC is an industry sector which is worth probing in order to see how it performs. To gain this result, its innovation process and blocking & inducement mechanisms should be investigated. Although the innovation process in manufacturing industry has received great attention, service industry has received relatively less attention. Researches show that Sectoral Innovation System (SIS) analysis framework can be used for service industries as well. Developing countries, until recently, have remained largely outside changes that have been occurred in KIBS. It seems that there is a large gap between MC (as a KIBS) in developed countries and MC in developing countries. In Iran, MC suffers from, and is bound by, many historical and institutional legacies which constrain its development. This paper intends to explore the current structure and dynamics of Management Consulting Sector in Iran based on the theories of Sectoral Innovation Systems (SIS). All published materials about management consultancy of Iran in any format (article, speech and panel discussion), 10 special interviews and discussions with industry experts (gurus), and visiting and auditing of about 40 MC firms were used as references for investigating structural and functional patterns of MC industry in Iran & its dynamics. After gathering information & analysing it, we validated the results in a session with a group of industry experts. By positing the functional analysis of MC industry, we have identified the main blocking and inducement mechanisms in way to its progress. The results of this study can be used by Iranian policy makers (as well as others in developing countries) to identify the main policy issues, goals and promotion strategies for consulting sector.

A country’s ability to develop a competitive service economy depends on its production sector, as they demand use of services. Continuous improvement or innovation in technologies in both manufacturing and services will simultaneously increase smooth flow of operations for competitiveness by lowering cost of production and enhancing customer satisfaction, to attain value. The success of different industries depends on how well the service sector is geared to support them. The research study investigates the Sri Lankan context on GDP generating components to identify suitable management strategies for enhanced value. The research proposes nine variables; ‘human, ‘natural resources’, ‘human capital’, ‘knowledge’, ‘capital’, ‘intellectual capital’, ‘output’, ‘input’ and ‘environment’ considered as resource capabilities to set in motion in an integrated process to create value. The research design identifies these variables as core competencies of the country and their combined efforts or cross functional activities are capable of generating value. To carryout better management strategies, it is necessary to provide a tangible link to integrate the production and distribution channels for efficiency and effectiveness of the organizational and technological dimensions. Technology transfer and continuous innovation of systems enhances productivity growth for cost competitiveness leading to better prices, responsiveness and flexibility of the processes to deliver a quality product to changing markets. The research purpose is therefore to analyze the characteristics of research variables in relation to GDP value generating sectors and focus on issues relating to value. The research is carried out through administering a questionnaire among 100 selected specialists in Sri Lanka in the GDP value generating sectors, namely, agriculture, industry and services. They are policy makers/experts crafting strategies for value gain; industry leaders managing and generating value through resources and value monitoring agents through measurement systems. In addition to administering the questionnaire, in depth interviews were carried out with the experts to gather insights into crafting of strategies. A pilot study was carried out to identify how organizations mobilize their core competencies to achieve organizational goals and thereby contribute to GDP value. It suggests that country’s economic growth allows service providers to focus their strategies on consumer purchasing power and expand their core competencies to achieve more returns. Unlike service providers, other two economies namely agriculture and industry directly contribute to the GDP value by being in the goods transformation process. Based on the pilot study findings, a large scale data collection will be carried out to gather insights into the situation. Key words: resources, service technology, integration, value.

Cell phone usage in Nigeria has increased exponentially in recent years. Global technology advances have benefited Nigeria’s long depressed telecommunications industry. Privatization of Nigeria’s telecommunications markets coupled with new incentives for Nigeria to trade internationally have lead to this sharp increase in telecommunications capacity. Technology plays a critical role in small business development throughout Nigeria. This paper describes the effects of government legislation on the growth of the Nigerian telecommunications industry. The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) was signed into law on May 18, 2000 as Title 1 of The Trade and Development Act of 2000. The act offers tangible incentives for African countries to continue their efforts to open their economies and build free markets. The Nigerian government has now effectively privatized Nigeria's telecommunications industry. The Telecommunications Act of 2001 allows the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to issue licenses to existing and prospective service providers. Telecommunications have sharply increased in Nigeria as a result of more liberal economic policies by the Nigerian government. We provide a theoretical analysis which shows that the Nigerian experience is due in part to global technology shifts at a low cost to Nigeria. Human capital in Nigeria has increased in terms of basic computer literacy, which makes telecommunications a source of economic growth for Nigeria that is still relatively untapped. Literature that focuses on the digital divide provide support for this type of growth that requires little original research and development but has large economies of scale and direct positive network effects. Models for economic growth show that investments in human capital are necessary to support long term economic growth caused by unforeseen exogenous shifts. We describe how changes in telecommunications policy have positive effects on cell phone usage throughout Nigeria. This paper takes an institutional perspective and evaluates the new changes that may be used to explain the cause of increased telecommunications.

Every nation is acutely concerned with its economic growth and a number of measures are initiated to facilitate an enabling environment conducive for growth in the long term. Capability building in technology is one of the foremost among concerns, as it is widely recognized that technological advancement in vitally linked to the long term progress and economic growth of a nation. It is not merely a better life style or a greater comfort for mankind that has prompted this realization but that requirements are met only through an interface with technology. Hence, rapid industrialization has been the recourse most nations have pursued. Efforts to provide technological inputs and build industrial capacity have been taken by different nations, in large measure, commensurate with the requirements of the situations demanded at various points of time. Some of the paradigm shifts being experienced world over are rapid market variations, short lifecycles of products and technologies, growth of innovation based knowledge firms as against large industrial firms, and having to contend with global competition. Consequent to these changes in the economy, the measure of success is increasingly market capitalization and not profit, and enterprises are placing greater emphasis on managing change, are introducing flexible and lean production as against mass production, and are opting for distributed decision making systems as against vertical decision making. In this milieu, the key growth drivers are knowledge, innovation, integration, new business creation and venture strategies. Informatics and e business have become the technology drivers of choice, just as automation and mechanization held sway earlier. The importance of human capital is being increasingly realized as against mere financial capital and the main sources of competitive advantage are perceived as obtainable through human resources, cost control, customer management quality and time-to-market; and not cost reduction through economies of scale as was the practice earlier. Strategic alliances are common place to synergize complementary assets and the entire value chain is focused upon. The preferred organizational structure is becoming a set of inter-connected sub systems. In tune with these changes, the workforce is becoming multi skilled, and continuous learning is becoming a norm, empowered self-leadership styles have come into being, and employer-employee relations are more of a cooperation and team work kind. The paper attempts to provide a treatise on some of the major measures taken by India as a country to contend with these changes.

Energy is one of the most important factors necessary for economic growth, and there exists a direct relationship between an increasing demand and supply of energy (DSE) and economic growth. By 2030, increased levels of DSE in the world may be 60% higher compared to 2002, including 22% for coal and 36% for oil. The share of nuclear energy is expected to be relatively stable, actually decreasing slightly from 7% in 2002 to 5% in 2030. For Japan, in-country DSE is as low as 19%. Increased use of nuclear energy can save fossil resources and reduce environmental degradation. However, lack of appropriate nuclear sites and the acceptable disposal of radioactive wastes are constraints on nuclear expansion. One promising option is to fortify fuel cycling earlier. The more promising way may emphasize and support the concept of innovative nuclear energy systems (INES) and to actively promote technology innovation. This paper describes the result of evaluation of nuclear knowledge management (NKM), where light water reactor (LWR), the high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR), and the fusion reactor (FR) are taken as important factors of future INES. An explicit beneficiary resulted in importing a LWR from the United States (US) to Japan is difficult to make quantitative evaluation, while the Federal R&D expenditures at 1950-75 in the US was 3.2b$ (billion dollars). This however brought a strong impact on Japanese electricity market because a retail sale of 52 LWR units in Japan is 47b$ a year for nuclear electricity and 11b$ for reactor components (year 1999 base). For JAERI, funds invested to 45-year study of LWR were 4.3b$ including human resources of 34,718 man?year. A feedback from JAERI to tax payers was estimated to be about 6.3 b$. Our study on NKM can possibly reveal a cost benefit effect of JAERI for LWR, that is, 1.5 (6.3/4.3). Funds invested in the 32-year(1969-2000) study of HTGR were 1.5b$ for R&D and 0.3b$ (2,966 man?years) for personnel. In US, R&D expenditures of Gas Cooled Reactor were 0.5b$ at 1950-1962. Commercialized HTGR will result in a cost reduction of electricity during power generation and also of that for hydrogen energy production. Retail costs of the former are 0.31b$/year and the market for the latter is 19.7b$/year. Of the two, the share of JAERI is 0.015b$/year for the former and 0.06 b$/year for the latter. The net benefit of JAERI investments to taxpayers thus totals 0.075b$/year. Funds invested in the 32-year(1969-2000) study of FR were 5.4b$ for R&D and 0.6b$ (6,331 man?years) for personnel. Estimates are that after commercialization in 2050, the share of FR will reach 23.4% in year 2100 and that a commercialized FR will generate revenue from electricity as high as 1,687b$ during the period 2050-2100, or 34b$/year -- which is greater than that of LWR. However, there is substantial uncertainty in these estimates. To achieve long-term INES, it is necessary to develop the sustainable scenarios and the long-term robust NKM, as shown in the present study.

There are similarities between the air-space and nuclear industry regarding safety. In both cases we are dealing with sophisticated technology, equipment, processes and strong interface with human behaviours. This scenario is well understood in both industries. However there is a range of uncontrolled accident risk as a consequence of poor management and lack of appropriate measures to prevent events that can result in accidents, like the tragic Columbia one. Since the Tchenobyl accident, in April 1986, the nuclear industry has promoted a very comprehensive review of procedures and practices, aiming to improve significantly the safety level of Nuclear Power Plant operations. As a result of these efforts, the nuclear industry has advanced significantly in terms of establishing a well structured set of criteria to evaluate and prevent events involving human factors, as well as the decision making process. Due to this reason, it is very useful to review the decision making errors related to the Columbia accident taking into account the nuclear industry criteria to identify clearly and properly the accident causes. The results of this preliminary analysis can help aerospace industry to check and review the implementation of the recommendations of the Columbia Investigation Board Report. The main aim of this work is to stress the similarities between the air-space and nuclear industries in terms of management of safety issues. It is very important to notice that the factors influencing accidents have the same sources in both industries, mainly related to failures involving hardware, processes and human performance, and/or combinations of these factors. For instance one well known cause of recent significant events in the nuclear industry was the “overconfidence of plant staff” which is similar to the “reliance on past success as a substitute for sound engineering practices” observed by the NASA Investigation Board. It is very recommended that both industries share their experience to prevent accidents in the future. The most important contribution of the nuclear industry should be the use of its approach of accessing safety and promoting high safety standards world-wide, in order to support and review procedures, management and practices of the air-space industry. This contribution should be considered as an independent counterchecking process by qualified peers. This can result in improvements and critical evaluation of corrective measures, helping high level management to take decisions.

The industrialisation of any new technical system requires the establishment of the required industrial infrastructure and supplier base for the system. This paper presents a new methodology used for the determination of industrialisation guidelines for South Africa's Pebble Bed Modular Nuclear Reactor (PBMR) programme. The methodology consisted of a number of steps. These were a survey of the required industrial capabilities and an audit of current domestic industrial capabilities. In the next step the strategic & operational requirements of the programme, current and future market conditions and domestic industrial capabilities were evaluated and the scores were combined to calculate the recommended industrialisation guidelines. There were four possible outcomes or guidelines that this methodology could produce. They were for local procurement, overseas procurement, partnership procurement, or competitive procurement. The evaluation was done by a panel of experts using a modified Delphi technique. It was found that the PBMR systems, sub-systems, units and components should be procured from different sources. However, the option of open international tenders where price is the primary criterion was not the favoured option for any of the items considered.

Despite the fact that sustainable development has only recently become the center of attention of the scientific communities around the world, Islamic Republic of Iran has paid a lot of attention to such a concept since its establishment and article fifty of its constitution states: "In the Islamic Republic of Iran protection of the environment, in which present and future generations should enjoy a transcendent social life, is regarded as a public duty. Therefore, economic and any other activity, which results in pollution or irremediable destruction of the environment is prohibited". Sustainable development as it was initially defined by the Brundtland Report "a development that meets the need of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" is looking for maintaining or increasing the overall assets available to future generations. In this regard, sustainable development is not an environmental protection policy that only focuses on phenomena such as global climate change, rising sea levels, loss of biodiversity and accelerated rate of spreading deserts, but also providing health, shelter and food are among the main goals of this concept. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the consumption of electricity is practically synonymous with modern life in the industrialized world. From this point of view, the optimization of production and consumption of energy are among the main strategies in both developed and developing countries. Considering a report published by the World Bank in 2004, over 96% of electricity production in Iran in 2001 came from fossil sources (74.9% from gas and 21.2% from oil) and the insignificant remaining part (3.9%) was based on hydroelectric sources. Although Iran's export of crude oil currently runs about 2.3 million barrels per day, total refining capacity of the country (1.5 million barrels per day) is insufficient to meet the country's domestic need. If the current rate of oil and gasoline consumption continues in Iran, the country will lose its oil export revenues by 2015. Combustion of fossil fuels in Iran produces large amounts of CO2 (the biggest contributor to global warming), noxious gases, and many toxic pollutants. Analysis of carbon dioxide production in Iran clearly confirms the necessity of the use of emission-free alternative energy resources such as hydroelectric and nuclear power. These data indicate that Iran needs clean and reliable alternative energy resources such as nuclear energy for its sustainable development. Furthermore, beyond electricity generation, the use of nuclear energy in medicine, industry, agriculture, food preservation and research significantly increases the quality of life and reduces the adverse effects on the environment without consuming valuable fossil resources which must be saved for future generations. It should be also noted that Iran's rich fossil resources can be used in many industrial fields such as petrochemistry, while currently the only practical application of uranium is energy production. It can be concluded that due to Iran's rapidly increasing energy demand, optimal use of fossil resources and using combination of proper resources such as hydro-nuclear energy as effective alternatives seem to be inevitable in the upcoming years of 21st century.

Worldwide, engineers are trained to solve problems and to develop new technologies. To devise their solutions, engineers are frequently engaged in R&D activities to develop new, or improve existing, technology and products. Despite a healthy worldwide economy, R&D budgets everywhere are shrinking as corporations struggle to maintain healthy profit margins for their investors. In order to continue to maintain and extend R&D related activities, engineers can no longer sit on the sideline and expect to combat the ever-shrinking R&D budget. Fortunately, most governments already have incentive programs (usually implemented as tax credits) in place to encourage R&D efforts. Although the level of incentives is not uniform across governments, the idea and the basic requirements are commonly based on policies discussed among directorates from different countries through organization such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Although the details of the R&D related tax rules vary slightly among different countries, most of them are based on the Frascati manual published by OECD, a de facto standard for the measurement of scientific and technological activities. The Frascati Manual defines R&D as: “The term R&D covers three activities: basic research, applied research and experimental development. Basic research is experimental or theoretical work undertaken primarily to acquire new knowledge of the underlying foundation of phenomena and observable facts, without any particular application or use in view. Applied research is also original investigation undertaken in order to acquire new knowledge. It is, however, directed primarily towards a specific practical aim or objective. Experimental development is systematic work, drawing on existing knowledge gained from research and/or practical experience, which is directed to producing new materials, products or devices, to installing new processes, systems and services, or to improving substantially those already produced or installed. R&D covers both formal R&D in R&D units and informal or occasional R&D in other units.” Frascati Manual 2002. In practice, the above definition can only apply to a portion of typical R&D activities. Even with proper guidance, many engineers are still mystified over how their R&D is evaluated. In order to have a competitive edge in today’s global economy and global competition, engineers need to understand how the expenditures attributed to R&D activities can be recovered effectively and remain competitive. A practical understanding of how R&D is measured will allow engineers to optimize their activities accordingly. The financial benefits reaped from incentive programs ensure that R&D will continue and that companies benefit from the results of the R&D. A marginal R&D project (in terms of cost and benefit analysis) can be made attractive after factoring government incentives. Moreover, this could mean the difference between hiring additional staff for R&D and dismissing R&D staff. In this paper, the authors propose strategies and techniques that engineers and scientists can integrate into their daily work to maximize R&D tax incentive potential.

Japan’s economy has been shifting from a growth oriented trajectory initiated by supply side to a new functionality development based trajectory through the interaction between supply and demand sides. To correspond to above mentioned trend, Japan’s high-tech firms have been reforming their R&D strategies. The high-competitiveness firms improve their marginal productivity to technology by appropriate R&D activities for growth, and have raised their market value. On the other hand, in bigger firms, the contribution of the technology knowledge stock to growth decreases by their inappropriate restructuring of R&D activities. Based on the concept of an optimal R&D investment for a dynamic model, this paper attempt to demonstrate a dynamism between optimal and actual levels of the R&D intensities for major Japan's manufacturing sectors using a practical model for identifying an optimal R&D investment level. Compared with firms’ optimal R/S and actual R/S, contrast between high-competitiveness firms and other firms can be seen as follows; i) While bigger firms are reluctant to change their strategies because of the organizational inertia, relatively high-competitiveness firms are endeavoring to convert their strategies. ii) While relatively high-competitiveness firms have been increasing R&D intensity by self-propagating virtuous cycle with a positive market reaction, bigger firms are trapped in a vicious cycle.

After startup period, and more than three years of operation, technological companies have been argued to be in more sustainable ground with their existence. Balanced performance control, and measurement systems are favoured in these environments, and frequently technical uncertainty and technological core competence issues have been solved in the startup phase with some amount of market acceptance and financial success. In this research work we try to sketch performance measurement challenge of two groups of technological companies: (i) those which have history of 3-5 years (longer lived), and (ii) those which have more than five years (sustaining). We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models in the evaluation of hundreds of different technological companies financed by one Finnish venture capital company. Observation period in this research is from 1986 to 2002. Findings of this research work are rather interesting: As technological companies are from 3 to 5 years old, we find that roughly one third of the companies show on the average negative profitability, and therefore we conclude that these companies could not be managed solely with revenue generating innovations. So, profitability management is the vital issue in these less mature environments, and balanced measurement systems are more than needed. However, as we analyze group of companies having more than 5 years of financial history, they seem to be generating revenues as well as profits, and one output revenue based DEA model and three outputs based profitability DEA model seem to produce similar average performance for the 281 (revenue DEA) and 246 (profitability DEA; all of the companies should have on the average positive profitability) companies being observed. However, from the each of the analyzed groups we conclude that efficiency variation exists among different companies, and average efficiency is below 50 % whatever the frontier being fitted is (constant or variable return on scale). This observation leaves space for more common and efficient product development practices that increasingly coherent performance could be achieved between different companies.

In 2005, the world’s 1.000 most technology-intensive companies spent $407 billion for research and development – representing an increase of six percent compared with the year before (Booz Allen Hamilton, 2006). In the course of this innovation dynamics, intangible assets prove to be the number one value driver of many companies and thus are to be treated adequately in the financial statement. Along with the enhancements of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) newly prescribes the accounting of intangible assets according to their true value and not – as it was common practice in the past – on basis of costs. There are two fundamental valuation approaches for intangibles: The Fair Value approach takes market prizes as reference points for the assessment. The Value In Use approach focuses on the company-specific utility of an intangible asset. However, by applying these valuation approaches on R&D, two crucial issues are revealed. First, the Fair Value approach demands for current market prizes which rarely exist for technologies. Therefore, the Fair Value approach is rather ineligible for this purpose. Second, technology assessments according to the Value In Use approach are hardly reproducible and objective, as an appropriate operationalized methodology does not exist yet. This paper gives an overview of the research project „Technology Balance“ conducted at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT. The Fraunhofer IPT attends to the second approach and develops a methodology to assess new technologies according to the Value in Use approach. The core objective of the methodology is to estimate expected future cash flows resulting from new technologies. By integrating the real option approach, technologies shall be assessed and entered in the balance sheet in early stages of there development. In this paper, the initial situation and motivation for the research project as well as the developed methodology are described in detail.

With innovation in industrial networks becoming the emerging paradigm, the need for a holistic approach towards collaborative issues is restrained by the fragmentation of research into innovation. From a practitioner’s point of view, the holistic view presents the only way out of dealing with networks; partial solutions will only increase the number of conflicting issues that needs resolving. At the same time, some contemporary developments foster the characteristics of industrial networks: collaboration, decentralisation and inter-organisational integration. The perception of innovation has changed by a growing emphasis on external knowledge and an increasing need to seek for appropriate business models for technological developments. Thereto, this paper offers some perspectives for addressing innovation in industrial networks, especially by evaluating the perspectives against the characteristics. None of these perspectives offers a complete picture of innovation that crosses the organisational boundaries of the monolithic firm. The perspectives that this paper addresses, is merely a selection: strategic networks, technology valorisation, contractual relationships, Resource-Based View, social dynamics of relationships, knowledge management and complexity. All the perspectives seem to provide pieces of the puzzle; no doubt others will provide pieces not provided here. For example, the perspective on information technology for looking at innovation in industrial networks is not addressed in this paper, even though it is one of the drivers for the emergence of industrial networks. The presented perspectives have different outcomes and sometimes-diametrical approaches towards issues in industrial networks; consider the Resource-Based View taken from the characteristic of collaboration within networks and interorganisational learning. The approach of this paper looks for a comprehensive theory and aims at displaying different perspectives, which might be needed in any combination to solve partial and holistic problems of innovation management. The current practice of fragmentation has been cultivated by the fact that the world of management has been overfed by theories that might have been adequate to some enterprises to deal with the contemporary challenges facing industry but not to others. All these theories have in common that their foundations stem from a variety of presuppositions pertaining to different factors that might directly influence the rate of success of an organisation at one place and time. Direct transferences of these approaches to networked enterprises regularly fail as they lack problem-oriented interdisciplinary inferences. Indeed, we need a more integral view but mostly by combining existing perspectives in a more holistic view. Decision-making in companies requires a holistic view, especially the decisions concerning inter-organisational integration and collaboration. The temporary problems can be resolved by using one or more in collaboration and industrial networks. It is a choice for to either encapsulate functional silos of innovation or to develop a more comprehensive approach crossing various disciplines, the third generation of research in innovation management; where both academic insight (the technology-push) and industrial challenges (the market-pull) drive the research agenda as well as the development of methods and tools for industry.

Technology is a key factor to create competitive advantage. However, if investments in technology are not adequately integrated to the strategy, the contribution to the company goals will be reduced. The purpose of this paper is to design and test a conceptual framework to evaluate the level of integration between strategy and technology. Initially, a conceptual model will be designed based on the competitive analysis model proposed by Michael Porter. Then an application to a real case will illustrate the framework. Wahler is a German company of the auto parts industry intensely involved in utilizing modern technology management tools to increase its competitiveness.

These days, innovative actions take place against the background of growing cost pressure, intensified competition on the global markets, as well as increasing homogeneity in services and non-cash benefits. Increasingly, similar products make a differentiation more important than ever. Therefore, systematic and efficient technology and innovation strategies are essential in order to be successful in the market long-term. After several years focusing on cost reduction and process improvement, companies rediscover the importance of technology and innovation management and the potential out of it to obtain sustainable competitive advantages. Consequently, organizations and businesses have recognized the need for finding new methods and paradigms to efficiently serve existing and new markets with new and/or modified products as well as services. In general, two different approaches can lead to these goals. On the one hand, certain market needs can initiate a structured search for an appropriate technology in order to develop or enhance products and/or services. On the other hand, a new technology can encourage considerations for improving or entire new developing products and/or services. Hence, the management and coordination of this processes is complex and time-consuming and there are several intersections with the corporate innovation management. In this paper, an extensive literature overview of the technology and innovation management aspects on market-pull and technology-push will be given. A special focus is on the accordant methods in order to search for current market needs and new related technologies. Within the framework of this paper, the challenges, problems and threats coming along with the corporate technology management are considered. Especially, the existing classification of market-pull and technology-push will be introduced and called into question. Moreover, the authors will exemplify an approach how to manage a proper connection of the two alternatives within a technology-based service company. The selected study focuses on one of Germany's biggest and most successful software development and information technology service provider. Based on interviews and practical applications, a pragmatic approach will be shown how to integrate market-pull and technology-push activities within the corporate technology and innovation management at the same time.

Enterprise long and mean term strategy is, for a significant part determined, by decisions concerning new product/process or infrastructure investment decisions. Theoretically the more innovative future products are, the more investments and infrastructure modifications need to be made. One of the problems when launching a new product is to reach a trade-off among the technology constraints, raw materials features and cost goals. In that way, we propose an evolutionary based methodological approach to integrate level of innovation (radical or incremental). In particular, a bibliographical analysis is done in order to set up main contributions of evolutionary techniques on innovation and new product development areas. The proposed approach will be discussed through a theoretical experiment carried out by our research team, regarding impacts on product and process modifications of a polystyrene manufacturing unit. The impacts are quantified on final product technical parameters, innovation degree and subsequently applications. Innovativeness was integrated thanks to the CPII index, a multicriteria approach proposed in (Morel et al, 2005) which allows to improve computation and interpretation of innovation capabilities. Thus, evaluation of technology practices and product characteristics the enterprise level could be translated in attributes and capabilities to build and effective technology strategy. As a decision making support tool, this approach could provide relevant elements in order to establish a technological strategy in a given industrial context.

The PC (personal computer) technology system consists of multiple subsystems comprising different technologies to provide users of PCs the overall computational performance. While the pace of technological advancement remains rapid for all the subsystems, the deployed performance levels of the technologies are not equivalent between subgroups. Consequently, the level of performance in one subsystem necessarily is at any point in time lower than the level reached in the other subsystems. This deficient subsystem is the reverse salient, hindering delivery of overall performance to end-users. Our current understanding of reverse salience dynamics and its measurement remains limited. The purpose of this paper is therefore to study reverse salient behavior of subsystems inside the PC technology system and to validate an appropriate measurement of reverse salience. We develop a temporal time-lag measure for observing reverse salience and employ this measurement to study reverse salience between performances of the CPU (central processing unit) and PC game subsystems, with respect to a common performance parameter of processor speed. We additionally reveal the time evolution of reverse salience as measured with the time-lag between 1996 and 2005. Our findings suggest that the level of technological performance of the PC game subsystem continuously trails that of the CPU subsystem, confirming it to be the reverse salient in the PC technology system delivering overall computational performance to end-users. Our temporal measurement of reverse salience indicates a dampened oscillating dynamics which stabilizes after 1999 to a range of 1000 to 1200 days. In conclusion, we discuss the appropriateness of time-lag as a measure of reverse salience and elaborate on our investigative outcomes.

This research focuses on proposing a strategic model of national industrial portfolio based on technological classification, namely, the decline, cognitive, coordinative, and cooperative technology. Particularly, firm-level strategies and national-level policies both in the large and small companies or countries are provided, based on the analysis of this strategic model for different stages of industrial evolution. Dynamic comparative advantages were broadly described to explain the systematic shift in locus of industrial leadership and the impact of technological evolution on industrial development. This research uses the concepts of science and technology gap, to derive the characteristics of competitive strategies and industrial organizations for different stages of industrial evolution according to the analysis of technology types, including the decline, cognitive, coordinative, and cooperative technology. With this perspective, we construct a national industrial portfolio model to devise the innovative strategies of technological development, and take several emergent industries as examples to explain the technological classification in this model. The concepts of first-mover advantages and complementary assets are also discussed in this model to evaluate their critical roles for different evolutionary stages. The results of this study show that different strategies should be applied in distinct industrial stages due to the characteristics of technology. Under this circumstances, the objective of this research aims to provide the firm-level strategies and national-level policies, including engineering, market, public interest, and transformational policies, both in the large and small companies or countries for different stages of industrial evolution. Not only does it provide a mechanistic understanding of industrial life cycle, it allows strategic resource allocation for technological development.

Technology is an inalienable part of human civilization and its evolution analogous to life processes. It is not without any reason that the world of technology is full of biological metaphors; e.g. evolution, mutation, selection, growth, life cycle etc. This ontogenetic coupling is essential to our understanding of relationship between 'Man' and 'Technology'. Human kind has emerged from billions of years of nature system's evolutionary process. Coevolved with us is a supporting web of techniques, beginning with simple tools of eons that now encompass a complex global technical system, serving social purpose. For most part of this evolutionary process humans survived as nomadic hunters and gatherers. This required considerable sophisticated (technical) knowledge. Knowledge is intrinsic to technology. This proposition implicates that the origin of technology as a 'tool' precedes the rise of Homo Sapiens, the 'modern man', and that technology derives its meaning from the 'nature' of knowledge.

Investments in information technology are essential to the competitiveness of the company. As resources are scarce, the identification of strategic information technologies and assessment of the firm’s capabilities regarding these technologies are critical phases of a planning process. This paper aims at delineating a conceptual framework to identify and evaluate strategic information technologies and then, to apply it to the Information Technology Department of the Brazilian subsidiary of BASF. Results will contribute to the IT planning process.

It is unquestionable that the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the economic, social and cultural processes has increased exponentially. New social, cultural, educational, politic and economic practices inherent to the so called Informational Society, or according to Castells (1999) “Network Society”, were created based on the ICT intense use. On the other hand, several authors (POLANYI, 2000; LAVILLE, 1996) have criticized this development which is essentially based on economic criteria. Such criticism is based on the need of redefining development by including aspects related to social welfare and policy structures. There is a gap between economic and social developments that has to be filled since they are complementary and parallel, thus to be sustainable they need each other. Polanyi (2000) understands that men economy has to be subjected to their social relationship, that’s to say, human motivations are originated within the social life context and guarantee a production and distribution order through the reciprocity and redistribution principles. We understand that the social entrepreneurship concept that is linked to reciprocity and redistribution principles is born in the social life context and is an alternative to promoting social change and development. According to such concept, social actors are not isolated atoms, but they are built-in, rooted, immersed and embedded in social net and structure relationships (ALBAGLI e MACIEL, 2002). According to Dees (2001), above all, the social entrepreneur takes on the mission to generate and maintain social values (not only private ones), what distinguishes him from the business entrepreneur. Taking into consideration this development and social entrepreneurship concept, the present theoretical essay aims at giving deep thoughts to the ICT potential as a tool that facilitates information and knowledge sharing and is used by social entrepreneurs when seeking local development. For our purpose, we initially developed a social entrepreneurship concept considering inclusion, participation and solidarity, and their related issues. Next, we defined social entrepreneurship concept considering it as a local development agent; and finally we considered the ICT facilitating aspects within local development, showing they provide flexibility and quick access to information, and are support tools addressed to the actors’ interaction (public and private) thus allowing information transparency.

Most of the organization has completed the information technology strategic plan (ITSP) document. The plan highlights the aspirations of the organization to ensure that the information technology (IT) contributes to the efficiency, effectiveness and competitiveness. The next step after the plan development exercise is the implementation stage. Much study done finds that most of the strategies formulated fail to be implemented. On the other part, there is a considerable interest on measuring the ITSP implementation. The main agenda is to indicate the effort have been done is worth or need to be reviewed for improvement. The implementation of ITSP is the most important point of the plan to ensure the successfulness of the plan, the projects were on scheduled, and IT resources are sufficient. The successfulness of the ITSP implementation stage also critical, in order to ensure that the planning of IT resources and project are properly organized. The proposed system architecture hopefully can contribute to the measurement of the ITSP implementation performance. The main idea was on the key performance indicator relationship model to identify the ITSP performance. This paper also proposes the performance measurement process to measure the implementation stage. The measurement process is based on the specified indicators and metrics that is formed from the IT perspectives. This on-going research will be highlight on the system design stage and the preliminary development of the proposed system. The result on the pre-implementation of the system also will be covered.

The increasing rate of global accounts' centralization of purchasing activities, rationalization of the supplier base, and demand for globally consistent service have driven several multinational companies to reform their organisational structures, and to look for ways to improve the internal coordination of their selling processes. One possibility to strengthen internal coordination of sales activities is to establish a multifunctional and multinational sales team. Although team-based selling in general has been found to benefit the management of customer relationships in many ways, the organizational complexity and cultural diversity, characteristic for global account management (GAM) teams, make decision-making and reaching a consensus difficult especially during the early stages of the team existence. Previous studies indicate that dispersed and cross-functional teams are often associated with misunderstanding, lack of spontaneous interaction between the team members, and limited amount of mutual knowledge. Yet, only a little is known about the managerial practises that could help firms to implement GAM more effectively. In this paper we evaluate how a Group Decision Support System (GDSS) can be used to support the development of GAM teams. In particular, we focus on the problems that concern planning and decision-making in the early stages of the team existence. The applicability of the GDSS is illustrated with a case study of a GAM team in a global manufacturing company. The empirical investigation for the study was conducted in the GDSS laboratory of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) in autumn 2005. The GDSS session consisted of separate phases during which the role of the GAM team was clarified, the status of the current situation of the global account relationship analyzed, and strategic plans made for further strengthening of the relationship. The findings of the study suggest that GDSS can be a useful tool for enhancing the group work of heterogeneous selling teams. The GDSS seemed to have positive impact on the participation of the team members in an idea generation compared to the previous meetings of the team. The parallellism feature of GDSS enabled more efficient elaboration of different views compared to traditional meetings, thus reducing the classical problems of heterogeneous teams to share knowledge. The anonymity of the GDSS put all the team members at the same level, and thus, personal relationships or hierarchies within the team did not seem a problem. Sensitive issues that were not previously brought up were now discussed in an open manner. The findings also indicated that GDSS could remarkably improve the efficiency of the team work as GDSS reduces time pressures in complex decision-making processes. The findings of the study suggest that GDSS can be used to reduce the complexity of heterogeneous teams, and to solve problems, thus bringing about the "hidden potential" in heterogeneous teams.

The innovation, knowledge and learning paradigm heralds knowledge workers in systems of innovation with renewed emphasis on information and intellectual capital as the primary assets for all spheres of development [1]. Learning interaction and knowledge transfer occurs between and among economic, engineering, socio-political, science and technology agencies, institutions and organisations. The practice of engineering and technology management embodies human choice and freedom, and as such, it may not detach from philosophy and psychology. Professionals with engineering and technology orientation form an important ethnic group of knowledge workers in the innovation economy paradigm. For these professionals, their learning processes and tacit knowledge interaction are influenced by individual and collective thinking styles, mental dispositions and cognitive preferences. These psychological processes affect the motivation and behavioural attitudes of engineering and technology professionals in practice, and thus thinking style preferences are significant issues for the the ‘management of technology for the service economy’. Within the context of systems of innovation, this paper makes use of a modified form of the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) to examine the thinking styles of technical knowledge workers in the new paradigm. The paper addresses the issues of cognitive contrasts with regard to : (i) Individual motivation and employee behavioural preferences [2]; (ii) organisational and action learning [3]; (iii) how thinking styles are incorporated in the design, development and delivery of management development curricula for engineering and technical knowledge workers [4]. The paper reports on the feedback obtained from judgemental samples comprising two groups. The first group includes 53 top executives of organisations that employ 10 or more engineering and technical knowledge workers. The second group includes 80 employees in engineering and technology related vocations. The results form part of an ongoing study [1] intended to provide a strategic view of Engineering and Technology Management within the context of knowledge and learning, with particular focus on behavioural alignment towards the modern innovation paradigm that emphasises the ‘management of technology for the service economy’.

Research and Development(R&D) organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the need for innovative approaches to responding more effectively to client's demands and changes in the market place. Knowledge Management(KM) is central to this and is increasingly recognized as an integral part of the organization's strategy to improve R&D performance. There is therefore a need for R&D performance based approach to KM. Carillo et al (2000) suggested that KM could be integrated into key performance indicators. Following hypothesis evolved from the study(1) there is a positive correlation between knowledge flow, knowledge strategy and R&D performance and (2) performance variables are positively correlated with knowledge flow variables and knowledge strategy variables in the KM strategy framework. A variety of research methods were used: literature review, questionnaire survey, case studies of R&D organizations for the development of the framework. The present study encompasses the problem of linkage of R&D performance with KM strategy in an R&D organization. The attributes of such problem were identified by multicriteria approach. An extensive literature review facilitated theory development and constitution of framework. The literature search included several journals, articles, books, newspapers and magazines. The principal collection data methods used were a combination of analysis of literature, statistical data from secondary sources, questionnaire survey and content analysis. Data collection for testing the hypothesis was done by a questionnaire method. The questionnaire was designed and categorized under two facets of KM strategy-a)knowledge flows b) KM modeling and the third facet reflected measurement of R&D performance. All the laboratories(38)under Council for Scientific and Industrial Research(CSIR),India were respondents to the questionnaire. KM strategies need to be aligned to R&D performance. These links enable an assessment of the effectiveness of KM strategy in terms of the degree to which R&D objectives are realized. The framework shows the possible relationships between knowledge flow, KM strategy and R&D performance. A knowledge management strategy should not only facilitate the transformation of the various types of knowledge within an organization but should provide an evaluation mechanism to measure the effectiveness of the strategy. The framework recognizes that to be able to assess the impact of knowledge management, KM initiatives have to be aligned to R&D performance. The study provides a structured approach for evaluating the impact of KM initiatives on R&D performance. Distinct types of performance measures are identified and the measures of effectiveness are outcome based measures.

Although the term “technological capability” is very commonly used to refer to a firm’s or nation’s technology utilization and generation capabilities, or “technological knowledge stock”, number of other terms such as “absorptive capability”, “production capability” and “innovative capability” are also employed for similar purposes. On the other hand, a limited number of studies in the relevant literature points to the importance of realising the distinction between each of these terms and different types of capabilities. While “production capability” indicates the ability of a firm to produce its final products in given quality and performance standards with a certain level of efficiency, developing “innovative capability” is one-step further, requiring further commitments and special resources, knowledge, expertise, mechanisms and routines to be able to innovate; to produce new product designs and production process, or improve the existing ones. Absorptive capacity, on the other hand, differs from production capability and innovative capability by its emphasis on the ability to acquire external knowledge, to assimilate and utilize it in the internal routines of the firm. The distinction between these terms is important since developing one of them does not automatically guarantee obtaining the other capabilities; each of different types of capabilities requires unique approaches and mechanisms to be generated. Furthermore, to what extent a firm can benefit from the knowledge transfer in the collaborative interactions with other firms is heavily influenced by the levels of “absorptive”, “production” and “innovative” capabilities. In the first step of this research, new indicators are defined and discussed to explore and operationalize the absorptive, innovative and production capabilities of component supplier firms in Turkish automotive industry. Next, how different levels and types of capabilities of component supplier firms affect the level of knowledge transfer from their main customers - in this case the car manufacturer firms- in their technological collaborations, is examined in the light of in-depth interviews and in our case studies.

Researches on knowledge transference in Multinationals Corporations (MNCs) are not recent. Since the 1960’s the first papers were published, originating theories about the knowledge inside organizations and forms of coordination process, since the creation until the sharing of the knowledge. Researches on the subject had increased, extending the focus and evidencing the dimensions that influence the process of knowledge management, seeking for factors that determine the effectiveness of the knowledge transference. Tacitness, absorptive capacity, power relations, social e economical variables are important subjects studied. These factors influence the design of the process of managing the sharing of knowledge and are reflected in the selection of strategies adopted at MNCs to conduct the process of knowledge management world-wide. The headquarters have became interested in consolidating and directing the knowledge flow between subsidiaries, promoting the organizational learning as a hole. Few researches were done with the goal to analyze the shared knowledge classification and to verify characteristics as restrictions, easiness, and context, of the specific transfer process depending on the area, for example, if R&D knowledge is more or less difficult to transfer than business knowledge, and how the knowledge transfer is managed. The more accepted classification of the knowledge is: explicit or tacit knowledge. Some studies tried to expand the classification identifying objective and subjective dimensions, ways of acquiring and retaining the knowledge, individual or collective knowledge, technical or not technical knowledge. However, few studies researched dimensions that influence the knowledge transfer process in MNCs based on knowledge characteristics, its dimensions and origins. Motivational, social, cultural and political dimensions also influence the knowledge transfer. It all affects the variability and influences of the acquisition, absorption, recording and sharing of knowledge. A multiple case study in MNCs subsidiaries in Brazil, originated from USA and Germany, was conducted. It was analyzed how knowledge tacitness, absorptive capacity and technological capabilities, headquarter and subsidiaries power, subsidiaries relevance inside the corporation and production costs influence R&D knowledge transfer process. Results showed that the level of tacitness of the area affects the easiness of the transference. Although technological capabilities and absorptive capacities are increasing in subsidiaries, headquarters centralize many decisions. Subsidiaries are searching to become more specialized not to depend so much on production costs.

This paper introduces the new Innovation Management (IM) Framework for better articulation, identification of gaps and challenges to help improve national competitiveness. The two basic inputs of the proposed IM Framework are innovation actors and innovation activities. Innovation actors are defined as industry, government, education institutions, research institutions and financial institutions. Innovation activities are human resource development activities, research and development (R&D) activities, and business development activities pursued by innovation actors in the national system of innovation (NSI). Using a 20 year time series data covering the period from 1985 to 2005, this paper demonstrates the use of the IM Framework as a national innovation management tool for the innovation actors: to determine and manage their contribution in the NSI; to assess and manage functional relationships among their activities in the NSI; and to identify and manage factors limiting competitiveness in the NSI. Finally, this paper examines the contribution of human resource development, R&D and business development activities in South Africa, Japan and Korean on national competitiveness.

Measures are derived by which a small technology supplier in a developing country can become part of a multinational automotive manufacturer (OEM) supply chain. In the typical developing country automotive industry, the possibility for a local supplier to become part of the local OEM subsidiary’s supply chain is decreasing since the OEM subsidiaries prefer to purchase from their multi-national suppliers. However, for the wealth of the developing country it is important to promote local technology generation, product development, skills development and export of products from local businesses. This investigation has been done on the example of rheocasting or semi-solid moulding technology, a manufacturing process technology particularly suitable for lightweight safety critical structural components. Through individual and group interviews with procurement managers of six of eight South African subsidiaries of multinational OEMs, measures have been developed that would facilitate the forward integration of this technology. The South African case offers a particularly broad representation of OEM positions, with parent companies from the USA (Ford, GM), Germany (BMW, DaimlerChrysler, VW), Japan (Nissan, Toyota) and Italy (Fiat). The measures derived from the survey facilitate the technology provider in promoting its technologies to an OEM decision maker. Amongst the measures for successful forward integration are: continuous communication regarding the status quo of a technology, approaching of the local OEM’s purchasing division as facilitator of contacts to the overseas headquarters while simultaneously approaching first-tier suppliers, identification of beneficial components for that technology to focus on, but focusing on one component at a time.

In the last years, there has been a growth in the number of studies regarding the management of innovation, considered as a key-factor for obtainment and maintenance of a competitive position in the market, whether national or international. Deliberately, firms, based on the action of its internal leadership, ought to draw innovation strategies, as well as to align them with its own capabilities and with business strategy. In spite of the variety of studies of this nature, there is still a lack of studies concerning the structuring of the innovation management activity in firms located in developing countries, such as Brazil. In parallel, there is an increase in the number of studies which argue that these firms are passive in terms of innovation, as they are characterised by an absence of innovative capabilities. Traditionally, however, the metrics used for analysing the innovative capabilities of this type of firms are statistical and macroeconomic indicators, such as patents and research and development investments. These indicators are incapable of understanding how the innovation process occurs, as they only capture the highest piece of the innovative activity. This study seeks to contribute with the filling of these existing gaps. In this sense, the study suggests a total innovation management system model based on the development of integrated and simultaneous innovation projects, focused on the reality of firms which operates in developing countries. This system should be: composed by information and knowledge related to the whole value chain, regarding market and technology; based on an organisational structure which promotes a portfolio of innovation projects; and supported by a system of tools and techniques that stimulate creative and entrepreneurial individuals. Jointly, all of these elements should be aligned, as well as converging with the firm’s deliberated innovation strategy, which also ought to be aligned with the firm’s business strategy. From this conception of total innovation management system rises a group of non-conventional indicators proper to examine the technological capabilities of firms which works in the context of developing countries, such as cadence and projects’ mix, presented and discussed in this article.

Today, the concept of technology transfer and technical science and the way that developing countries encountering it , is one of the most important approaches to catch up the gap with developed countries. Technology transfer to a country can have economic, political, cultural and social affects either positive or negative. We should try to maximize positive part and minimize negative part. In this paper, it?s tried to investigate some effective parameters in technology transfer process for each country and to find an appropriate model according to the technology which should be transferred , and cultural, social and political structures of the country. Ultimately we study technology transfer process in Iran?s automotive industry and find it?s weaknesses and strengths , positive and negative effects on Iran?s society and also suggest solutions to improve proposed model.

This paper presents the overall structure and the initial results of an ongoing long-term technology strategy development process for a newly industrialized country. The process started with assessing the key values of a large number of representative opinion leaders in the society. As a result of increased well-being and life-style sophistication, these values have now expanded from economic prosperity to explicitly include social equity and life quality. The process then collected over 230 major future candidate technologies and systematically aggregated them into about 30 manageable yet meaningful technology clusters. A number of workshops involving technology experts, industrial executives, and government officials were conducted to evaluate these clusters in terms of the overall importance to the country and the technical and competitive risks in the technology development. A number of strategy planning tools, including portfolio analysis and Pareto’s analysis, were used to develop an initial technology strategy by identifying the most promising technology clusters for the country and the appropriate government policies for supporting technology development in these clusters. In the next step, technologies from each cluster will be evaluated and the most appropriate technologies will be identified for specific government policy actions. The paper also describes the real-time evolution of the strategy development process and the many interesting and important underlying socio-political considerations that affect its real-world implementation. These descriptions can serve as a useful guide not only to practitioners but also to academicians who are interested in the effective applications of strategy planning concepts and tools.

In developing countries, we speak generally about the assimilation, adaptation, imitation and perhaps upgrading of imported technology but less about the development of new one. However, some developing countries have emerged as serious competitors of developed countries in new areas of technology. These countries are able to supply competitive products or services. South Korea is one of these countries which has built technological capabilities to compete with developed countries on international markets. South Korean technological development began in the 1960’s when the government accelerated industrialization, implemented an export-oriented policy and supported importations of technology. Korean firms were able to set up several “learning interactive spaces” to seize technological opportunities. South Korea chose to set up industries like steel, automobile or electronics where it does not have any significant competitive advantage. Firms had to acquire production capabilities and supply acceptable quality goods in these industries as they compete on international markets. Consequently, firms used importations of capital goods and turnkey plants as well as reverse engineering to acquire technological capabilities. They took advantage of government support, Korean qualified workers and opportunities within the global technology system. Korean firms evolved from an imitation pattern of production to an “innovative” one. In the second stage, Korean firms adapted and improved technologies that they imported and assimilated. They were able to make incremental innovations and to acquire many innovation capabilities. Moreover, as Korean firms became serious competitors, foreign firms refused more and more to sell them the technologies needed to sophisticate their supply. Thus, Korean firms especially big ones extended their R&D activities and tried to enhance their innovation capabilities. The government took many measures to support strongly these firms. Science and technology, educational and financial systems as well as Korean scientists and engineers aboard were involved in this process. All of these efforts led to the improvement and sophistication of South Korean goods and made firms more competitive in many high-tech industries. Nevertheless, as the South Korean system of innovation reaches the frontiers of technology, serious problems come into sight. There are enough capabilities to innovate within current technological systems but not beyond. South Korea seems to lack enough creativity and imagination and cannot produce radically new knowledge. Indeed, South Korea has used very efficiently existent knowledge and technologies but has more difficulties to generate new ones. Can developing countries do more than use and maybe improve technology created by developed countries? Is their poor accumulation of scientific, technological, organisational and institutional capabilities preventing them from produce of new knowledge? Or does it depend on each national experience and the way national innovation systems are built and evolve? A comparative study the experience of developing countries in this field can make the process of knowledge and technology production more clear. This article describes how South Korea evolves from an imitation pattern of production to an innovative one, identifies stakeholders who make this evolution successful and address limits preventing at the moment production of radically new knowledge and technology in this country.

The service sectors driven by creative industry are more and more significant in 21st century. Film industry can be considered as the most comprehensive sector among creative industries. According to its intangibility and value-added attributes, this study conducts Industrial Value Chain theory and demonstrates the case study of Korean film industry to explore the successful developing model. The findings appear that the existent Industrial Value Chain can not fully explain the growing model of Korean case for the closed scope of the theory. Value Network Theory, however, provides a more comprehensive insight through cross-industrial viewpoints. This study hence combines Industrial Value Chain and Value Network Theory to present a Dual Value Delivery System, a system compatible for both the value-adding process inside and the cross-industrial value connection outside the industry, to explain the working model of film industry. This innovative conceptualization can be used to explain a developing system of current Korean film industry which is composed of three independent and complementary subsystem- nonprofit film value chain, commercial film value chain, and cross-industrial value chain stretched by Windows. Under the Full Cinema Service perspective, Dual Value Delivery System, as demonstrated by Korean case, gives a new horizon to observe the operation model for the film industry.

The objective of this research is to elucidate dynamic interaction between diffusion process and learning effect of plasma TV amongst Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese companies. The plasma TV industry recently achieved conspicuous development among these three countries. Comparing with LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) industry, PDP (Plasma Display Panel) industry has little distinct competition because of the short period of commercialization, its restrictive demand and simple process. Therefore, the structure of the market competition was reorganized among the leading companies since the end of 2004, and more intensive competition is expected to be. These leading companies also have common technology innovation, such as the application of glass cutting technology and world’s largest size plasma TV development. In addition, they show their mutual inspiration through the patent litigation each other and their technology innovation. On the basis of comparative analysis about plasma TV, this research attempts to identify factors contributing to the co-evolution within the institutions. Through an empirical analysis by utilizing a model of logistic growth within dynamic carrying capacity and learning effects, the unique institutional structures was demonstrated. Accordingly, our results show the characteristics of leading companies with the high level of functionality development and efforts of technology innovation. Stimulated by these understandings and prompted by a concept of diffusion process and learning effect, this research shows that leading companies can be attributed to rapid diffusion and market learning effects compared with other companies, which originated from the increasing level of diffusion process and accelerating learning effect.

The 1988 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIV Olympiad, were held in 1988 in Seoul, South Korea. South Korea became the second country to host Olympics in Asia. The host was chosen in the September 1981 vote. Citizen and government sectors devoted themselves to prepare everything for the Olympics. The event consolidated all the people and the President of South Korea knew it's the perfect timing for the diffusion of Olympics' context. The paper will use the theory in diffusion of innovation and national innovation to analysis the case in South Korea. Paju Bookcity and Heyri Art Valley are the cases presented in this research. Paju Bookcity is the first publishing Eco-city in the world. The evolution and the impact of the cases to South Korea will be examined and we hope the results will benefit to all countries in developing the publishing Eco-complex in the future

This paper explores and explains the relationship between interorganizational innovation processes and the elements of a national innovation system. The literature proposes that this relationship is characterized by mutual reinforcement, and suggests further research to investigate this connection. This paper integrates the interorganizational innovation process- and the national innovation system-approach into a new model. A case research project, that covers a sixteen-year period of sustainable innovations in the Dutch residential building industry, investigates the interplay between process- and systematic innovation within the structure of the model. The research project indicates, illustrates, and explains how interorganizational innovation processes and a national innovation system co-develop in an interactive and mutually reinforcing process. In this process, a national innovation system provides the structure in which interorganizational sustainable innovation processes develop, and the interorganizational innovation processes contribute to the building of a national system of sustainable innovation.

Satisfying customer needs has always been a significant part of the research and development activities apart from purely concentrating on technology development. The cornerstones of current product development management thinking is that corporations need to recognize and satisfy customer needs to survive in a competitive marketplace. In current literature, even though opposing arguments have been made, there exists a consensus that customer orientation in general leads to competitive advantages and better company performance. However, customer orientation may also result in technology development that drives towards technological lock-in. Especially at the early phases of technology evolution i.e. at the industry discontinuity the technology developers have very little guidance as what is the most likely winning technology at the marketplace. In the current literature there exists contradicting views on whether the industry conditions influence the performance results of customer orientation and further the theories of attributes that influence the relationship between customer orientation and a firm’s technological lock-in at the industry discontinuity remain largely under-developed. In this paper we discuss technological lock-in in R&D of sub-optimal technologies as a result of customer orientation at the industry discontinuity. Our case study involves ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) telecommunications technology development and selection process between end-user, operator and technology vendor in the mid-1990. At the time there were also rival IP- and routing –based technologies gaining popularity and at this industry discontinuity customer orientation of the technology developer directed its development investments in the sub-optimal ATM technology. Our case study findings provide evidence that customer orientation indeed may easily lead to failure in industry discontinuity conditions. We further demonstrate that the negative consequences of being customer oriented are due to path dependencies and its unpredictable sources. In addition we discuss managerial implications of the results in managing customer orientation and research and development activities in a highly intertwined supply chain.

Companies, while introducing the system of quality management, often need to evaluate and improve their technological capabilities. Because there are no standard requirements about evaluating technological capabilities like e.g. ISO 9001:2000 or EFQM model criteria with RADAR logic, the technology audit is often based on experiences from quality audits. Companies for the purpose of internal technology audit engage employed experienced auditors who are trained for different types of evaluations like internal and external ISO 9001, ISO 14001, HACCP, EFQM, etc. audits. We can see analogy between audits of systems of quality management and audits of technology capabilities. Only when practicing both type of audits we become aware of similarities and dissimilarities between them. We can assume that many companies are developing »their own« Technology Audit Model through preparation of audit, accomplishment of audit and audit report with recommendations and corrective measures. Our main goal is to discuss applicability and benefits of the existing Technology Audit Model (TAM) for evaluating technological capabilities and to produce audit report of the company. We further present the actual experience of the companies in Slovenia while preparing the TAM evaluation and benefits that are to be gained. TAM model was tested in more than fifty Slovenian companies. On that basis we are further testing and developing applicability and supportability of the TAM model in relation to the technological capabilities of Slovenian companies. Our main purpose is to ascertain if this concept is actually applicable.

University Research Laboratory (URLab) is a unique environment that performs knowledge-intensive activities. However, is not rare to observe a lack of systematic organization in its management processes to consider a satisfactory integrated vision associating the strategy, mission, people, culture, infrastructure, and mainly knowledge actions. This article discusses the motivations, necessities and the basis of a framework for the strategic management of this environment. The proposed framework comprises a Process Reference Model (PRM) and a Process Assessment Model (PAM) to assist URLabs to place its strategic management into a higher maturity level. The framework’s PRM is a set of individual processes containing its identification, name, purpose, and outcomes, sorted in four main groups to know: strategic management, infrastructure management, knowledge management, and people and culture. These four process groups encompass 17 processes each with individual process scopes, outcomes and basic practices. The PAM model is derived from the PRM to complete the framework highlighting the best practices and work products. The PAM permits the classification of URLab processes into six levels of maturity (incomplete, performed, managed, established, predictable and optimizing), according to attributes, from the less mature to the top of maturity in process management. To compose the framework the best practices of some URLabs were investigated by means of a survey consisting of an extensive questionnaire, submitted to all members of four laboratories and an interview with the main researcher or manager of the URLabs. Additionally, a profound investigation of the technical and scientific literature underpinned theoretical foundations for the framework construction. The proposed framework uses the architecture and some of the most generic processes of the ISO/IEC 15504-5 International Standard as a reference. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recently published this suite of standards, composed of five parts that provide definitions and requirements. The part 5 of this standard is an exemplar PAM for improvement of software production. In our proposition, the PRM is being submitted to the community in order to achieve a consensus of its relevance. This consensus is being pursued initially in some Brazilian URLabs. After the consensus a PAM could be used by funding agencies as a formal mechanism to decide on grants for research, based on the URLabs´ management capability profile. It could also be used as reference to improve strategic management in URLabs. This research strategy is preliminarily applied in technology-intensive URLabs of Brazilian universities. Its viability for other sorts of URLabs shall be corroborated. In addition, we believe the proposition is not yet suitable for universities in all countries, because of the differences in culture, universities and government’s policy. To be of wide use this proposal should consider a greater set of URLabs, including different types and sizes to be more inclusive as possible in our proposal. This task is our ongoing research.

The increased pressure on innovation forces companies to adopt new practices for successfully keeping up with increased competitive pressures. However, most practices of innovation management still rely on approaches derived from those for monolithic companies, keep up with competitive pressures by incremental innovations in never-changing architectures, still depend on hierarchical managerial practices and have an inward orientation. This paper attempts to outline the spiral in which these companies find themselves and to relate the consequences of that spiral to case studies. That innovation is a keystone in a competitive strategy leaves no doubt. Much research has been done on outlining the importance and impact of innovation management, on identifying factors that determine success, on pinpointing best practices. Internal innovation management has been connected to cultural differences, to strategy and human resource management. Recently, innovation in networks has received attention, also driven by concepts like open innovation and technology valorisation. Yet, most works have ignored the persistence of practices in industry that still view innovation management as a hierarchically manageable process, ignoring the iterative character of innovation processes and the strategic implications. The approach taken in this paper is to sketch the vicious cycle of innovation management taken from the hierarchical point of view. The hierarchical perspective asserts innovation from control aiming at improved financial-economic performance, which in turn leads to decreased innovative performance, which calls for more control, etc. That this cycle persists in industry will be illustrated by examples taken from different industries and will be related to work of others. This view is then compared with new insight from literature to break way from the vicious cycle. A number of routes are identified. The purpose of this paper is not to expand on these routes but mainly point to the existing, prevailing practices. Short-term decision-making determines innovation management in many industries. Hence, they do not arrive at setting a long-term agenda and internal innovation management is strongly hampered by a lack of an adequate vision. The conversion of that vision into an innovation strategy, for use in external and internal innovation management, requires additional capabilities of management that stretch beyond financial-economic motives. The reactive aptitude towards market demands results in a greater number of variants, even though customer demands do not vary that much. The internal organisation to address the variety in customer orders poses higher demands on control, resulting in more control and hierarchy, and, finally, decreased performance. The paper points to existing cracks in the industrial approach to innovation management and links them to literature on innovation management. At the same time it demonstrates that theories on innovation management have not yet reached sufficiently the practice at industrial companies. The paper points out that existing practices in industry fall behind on those required by competitive pressures. Especially, the paradigm of hierarchical control together with an inward view does not hold anymore in the contemporary era of speed of innovation.

The worldwide mobile phone market has made incredible strides over the last several years, and we fully expect this to continue. At the heart of it all remains the human desire to communicate. In order to understand what core competences are necessary to achieve business success in a winning position, we aim to investigate and study the relationship between core competences and business strategy of the mobile phone industry. In this paper, we first analyze core competences in the mobile phone industry by using a qualitative research design and provide an in-depth analysis of core competences for mobile phone industry, as this area is an important part of a firm’s competitive advantage. Secondly, we examine how core competences affect decision-making of business strategy, adopting Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evaluate different business strategies in the mobile phone industry. We then construct a hierarchy that includes four dimensions and each having three criteria. We assess the relative importance of these criteria, compared business strategies for each criterion, and determine an overall ranking of different business strategies in the mobile phone industry. To achieve higher competitive advantage in the mobile phone industry, it is definitely important to recognize and link core competences and business strategy together. This study explores the view of core competence having a direct involvement of mobile phone companies’ business strategy selection and formulation as well as also affecting the success of a firm’s business strategy. The research results show that core competence plays a key role in success of business strategy as linking core competences influence business strategy choice, formulation and change through decision-making. The consequent of business strategy implementation actions that are linked together with core competences leads a firm to achieve competitive advantage; by aligning the efforts one gains the most from their combination. The research results also indicate that firms having a higher level of linkage between both elements show successful business outcomes, such as growing their market share and/or gaining higher share rank. In particular, the research findings will also help companies in mobile industry to re-evaluate if their strategies to enable a better fit with their core competences. Furthermore, core competence has been demonstrated to be a powerful foundation of business strategy and competitive advantage for companies. Research findings of this paper are based upon an empirical investigation with mobile phone companies, and finding a positive relationship between core competences and business strategy. This is because both parts strengthen each other and paramount to a firm’s success and survival, hence should not be thought of in isolation from core competences when business strategy are formulated and implemented.

Historical studies of the development of large firms have demonstrated the importance of technological competencies as a source of opportunities for firms to diversify into new product markets. The ability to reuse technological know-how in different markets and businesses to gain as many advantages as possible is an important source of value creation. We call this ability ‘technology platform exploitation’. Although there are several studies which used and cited the term “technology platform”, there is no integrated and comprehensive definition which can be used in empirical studies. Purpose: This paper aims to define “technology platform” and to identify its characteristics based on an analysis of contributions from previous studies on the term (e.g. GEST, 1986; Miyazaki, 1994; Kim & Kogut, 1996; Silverman, 1999) and of other complementary research areas in strategic management. Approach/Method: By clarifying the boundaries of the technology platform concept through comparison with other research areas, such as the core competency view, product platform and dynamic capabilities, the authors try to determine the characteristics of technology platform in a firm. Findings: Through an analysis of the literature, this paper concludes that technology platform consists of a set of distinctive technological competencies which are related and are common in different product families and applications. In order to maintain the relative permanence of technological knowledge, firm assimilates new knowledge and discards that which is obsolete. The platform technologies should be exploited and reused inter-temporally in different core products and businesses and should be rejuvenated in order to respond to environmental and competitive change. Originality: This paper introduces a conceptual framework for further empirical studies about technology platform exploitation and its relation to firm performance and competitive advantage.

In this paper we propose a two-stage methodology for the empirical identification of dynamic capabilities. The first stage of the methodology aims to identify the competitive advantage of the firm and to control the effect of market power on firm success. The purpose of the first stage is to identify the existence of competitive advantage that is sustained over a period of time in a changing competitive environment. The second stage concentrates on the in-depth identification of the capability. The first stage of the methodology is applied in an analysis of Finnish banking markets. In order to find out the competitive advantage of the firm we estimate differences both in production costs and in the pressure of competition faced by bank groups. The analysis is based on a panel analysis of the local banking markets during 2002–2005. Keywords: Dynamic capabilities, competitive advantage, competition analysis, panel data, banking

The position of Chief Technology Officer is relatively new to corporate leadership and very little has been published on the role, responsibilities, and relationships of this position. Like many of the traditional leadership positions, the skills necessary to execute this position vary depending on the growth stage that the company is entering. In this paper we discuss the manner in which the role of the CTO changes as a company grows from a start-up to an industry dominating position. We emphasize the differences in skills necessary to fill the position at different stages of development and the difficulty in retaining a single person in the position through this growth.

The main objective of this article is to propose a framework for managing IT service provision using service level agreements as lateral coordination mechanisms between IT area and other organization’s functional areas and third-parties. The interplay between the IT function and internal and external service providers is analyzed in detail and trade-offs arising from the benefits of establishing service levels between them and the possible rise of transaction costs are discussed. The framework provides valuable insights into the service design, since the discussion of SLA as coordination mechanisms arises from a deeper look into the relationship between organizational processes, strategic objectives and the services themselves. The article also presents a set of tools that enable the implementation and management of the IT service provision structure within an organization. A case study in the IT area of the brazilian Independent System Operator (ISO) is presented, where both the method and the tools are applied. It shows that positive results were achieved in what refers to improvements on IT service provision.

his project consists on to design and to implement a model of administration of knowledge, for the Curricular Project of Systematizing of Data and Engineering in Telematic of the Technological Ability of the University Distrital Francisco José of Caldas that allows to strengthen the teaching processes and appropriating of knowledge among the members of the university community. The design of the pattern of administration of knowledge implies to carry out an organizational analysis of the Curricular Project, to determine its current teaching processes and appropriating of knowledge and the one redraws of an organization that can rotate around the knowledge. The implementation of the pattern implies the assembly of a Center of Knowledge that has like base the pattern, for that which should be carried out an investigation of the technological architecture that allows to put it in march, the assembly of this architecture and the implementation of specific applications that use the pattern and strengthen the teaching process and appropriating of knowledge, as for example systems of virtual education. The centre of knowledge in computer technology, will allow to strengthen the process of formation of the university community, the training services, consultant ship and the development of technological solutions for the community and companies of the sector, the development of investigation projects in the areas of knowledge that are of interest for the Curricular Project and the formation of companies of technological innovation among its students. The above-mentioned requires of the design of an organization that it can administer the knowledge and to use it. Additionally the centre of knowledge in computer technology, will have the mission of receiving, to classify, to store, to transmit and to administer the appropriate and generated knowledge of the development of each one of the investigation lines that make part of the areas of knowledge that the curricular project this interested one in developing; the experiences and knowledge of each one of the professors and the projects developed by professors and students with the purpose of that can be used to strengthen and to support the process of the students' formation, to impel the proposal and development of investigation projects, to offer training services, consultant ship and development of projects of computer technology to the community and the companies of the sector and the support to the formation of companies of technological character among the students. The above-mentioned makes necessary to work in the conformation of an organization that this in capacity of adapting, to take place, to transmit and to use the knowledge to impel its work lines.

In recent year, many of Japanese enterprises have redirected their approach away from seeking new markets and added value for existing products through process innovation, and shrply toward seeking development of entirely new products and high added value through product innovation. For this purpose enterprises, scholars and the government have worked together to accumulate the knowledge and nature the human resouces required in the management of technology. The priority and emphasis of human resorces development, in particular, has ben in the training and education of Chief Technology Officers(CTO).In this paper, we divided and analyzed the roles CTOs play in successfully managing R&D for giving rise to process and product innovation as a five-stage process.

Communication manufacturing industry in Taiwan has played a key role in the supply chain of worldwide communication industry. Flexible working capital is essential to product innovation and market response. In this paper, we present a fuzzy-multiple-criteria-decision-making (FMCDM) approach to evaluation of account receivable (A/R) collection instruments. By considering the Telegraphic Transfer (T/T) advance (prepayment), the letter of credit (L/C), the documentary collection (including D/A and D/P), and the open account (O/A), FMCDM approach is for the first time applied to investigate the A/R collection for the broadband network equipment manufacturers in Taiwan. According to our results, when face new customer, the rank of preference is T/T advance, L/C, documentary collection, and O/A. When face experienced customer but with some credit concerned, the rank is given by T/T advance, O/A, L/C, and documentary collection. The rank is O/A, T/T advance, documentary collection, and L/C when we face good risk-rating customer. International collection in modern unpredictable global market could be difficult unless firms have taken appropriate collection strategies. We believe that our study provides an alternative for making critical decisions during selecting A/R collection instruments in communication industry.

The Internet and the ancient Chinese Silk Road are alike in their ability to spread culture and information. They are unalike in the speed, depth, and breadth with which this dissemination could be accomplished. Countries continually struggle in their attempts to improve the quality of life of people who are financially or geographically out of the mainstream. Basically, their success in this effort hinges on their ability to carry out what amounts to “education” in the broadest sense of the word. Technology has proved to be an excellent tool for governments to use, and the Internet is perhaps the most omnipresent. Yet, governments have had limited success in making this technology available to those who cannot afford it, or who live at relatively great distances from population centers. The objective of this study is to suggest strategies for governments to help the poor and rural citizens to improve their living standards through education via technology (the Internet). Using the Internet in Taiwan as an example, this paper will study current government programs, assess the difficulties in implementing these programs, investigate their outcomes and impacts, and address the reasons why the government cannot enlarge the scale of its Internet investment to help the rural and poor. Also, by studying business and consumer behaviors for providing and using the Internet services, the paper will attempt to draw useful strategies for governments to help their disadvantaged citizens to use the Internet to improve their living standards by broader dispersion of Internet technology.

The service sector is the largest economic sector in many developing or developed countries. By 2004, the service sector in Taiwan accounted for 68.7% of GDP while the manufacturing sector had fallen to 29.6%. As industrial structure changes, the service sector is currently absorbing most of the surplus labor from the manufacturing sector. To promote systematic development of the service industry, the Taiwanese government held the “National Service Industry Development Conference” in 2005, which stipulated goals and strategies for developing the service sector. The conference formulated development strategies for twelve categories of services. The medical, healthcare and care-giving services category is of greatest concern in an aging society. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the mechanisms adopted by the Taiwanese government for stimulating service innovation in the healthcare industry. Additionally, this study analyzes the approach for developing innovative IT-enabled services in the healthcare industry. Action research is employed to explore how the Taiwanese government learned from a hospital project and applied that experience to create innovative IT-enabled services and construct mechanisms for service innovation in the healthcare industry. A major finding is the identification of issues commonly arising when a hospital implements innovative IT-enabled services and the most effective solutions to those issues. Another important finding is the key mechanisms employed by the Taiwanese government to promote service innovation. Currently, twelve groups (including hospitals and companies) are applying the mechanisms designed by the government to develop innovative services.

The small-technology based firms (STBF) have unique characteristics, differing from medium and large firms and from traditional sectors of the economy. It is possible to list as an example the flexible and adaptable process structures and scientific knowledge application in developing new technologies, as distinguishing characteristics from medium and large firms. Effective strategies will position firms where they can leverage on internal capabilities, aligned with structure and processes, to better compete. The combination of internal capabilities, structure and processes, that means their internal characteristics, are unique to each firm and clearly influence the way strategies are formulated. STBF characteristics, therefore, will likely influence their strategy formulation, regarding to which there are few studies and specific models. The goal of this study was to identify how the characteristics of the small-technology based firms influence their strategy formulation process. The methodology was designed as a qualitative research, based in a multiple case study approach, supported by semi-structured interviews and content analysis. The main results indicate, firstly, that the technical vocation of the technological-based entrepreneur is the main determinant factor in the definition of the mission and the vision of his/her business. Secondly, the lack of financial and human resources in such a firm, allows for development of only a set of partial activities involved in the strategy formulation process. These facts lead to some singular conclusions. One of them is that in these firms there is almost no matching capabilities analysis and benchmarking studies to formulate strategies. Another one is that, in the strategy formulation process, STBF privilege almost exclusively the competition analysis of its sector, not considering other methods, such scenario analyses, to establish market positioning.

The emerging knowledge era where information is in constant flux everywhere and where it is spread widely has changed the nature of R&D pursuit considerably. R&D must become the more efficient as life cycles for products have shortened. Companies cannot survive alone anymore and even the innovation processes should go beyond the boundaries of the firm. This change has brought out the idea of open innovation approach suggesting that ideas for innovations can also emerge or go to market from outside the company as well as inside. Regional open innovation system, the innovation network comprised of different actors working towards creation of innovations in a certain region, can offer a favorable platform to advance the collaboration between companies in terms of innovation activities. Thus, the operations model which the idea of open innovation brings forth can be exploited to benefit the companies. This paper examines a concept for regional innovation system as a co-operational platform enabling and promoting the open innovation approach from the SMEs’ point of view. Results from a survey of 175 SMEs in four EU-regions are reported in order to highlight the situation of the collaborative field of regional innovation system to map the potential of external sourcing and exchanging of innovations in these regions. Based on the results of the survey, suggestions of an efficient model for open innovation empowering collaboration inside the regional innovation system are presented. Mutual learning and effective co-operation among regional actors (University-Industry-Government) are essential in formation of regional open innovation system, and in emerging Triple Helix III model, where organizational ties are strong, boundaries between actors blur and roles are defined for mutual wealth creation.

Small Medium Entreprises (SMEs) have important role in the Indonesian economy. In the 2005, they contribute 54. 66% of national value added, and they also contribute 3.36% (from 5.6%) of national economic growth. Beside that, SMEs represent 99.99% of Indonesian companies. This proportion gives positive implication in ability of SMEs to absorption of labors. In 2005, 96.77% of Indonesian labors work in SMEs. In the other hand, nowadays regional economy is instructing to global economy. In order to still exist and survive in the global market, SMEs claimed to increase their competitiveness. Innovation represent key factor of the company competitiveness (Forrest, 1990). Because SMEs in Indonesia consisted of the companies with various types of investment, this study attempts to analyze influence of investment types to innovation capability in SMEs, focusing in Indonesian auto parts industry. It was carried out an in-depth analysis by case study in three SMEs that have different type of investment, PT. Aisan Nasmoco Industry/ANI (Foreign Direct Investment), PT. Lippo Melco Auto Parts/LMAP (Joint Venture), and PT. Pratama Pionir Sentosa/PPS (Local Investment). This study found that the type of company investment effects innovation capability. The company with foreign direct investment will tend to have the lower innovation capability. It is because all of production activities are determined by holding company, so that the company only becomes executor of holding company plants. This condition causes company cannot create innovation. While company which its investment type is joint venture, will tend to more able to create innovation. Even though the innovation created is simple and incremental but holding company still gives opportunity for company to create innovation, especially innovation in production process. Different from two types of company previous, the company with local investment will be able to create innovation in the high level. It is because company must determine all of the production process itself. This condition stimulates company to make major improvements and modifications to existing technologies, and to create new technologies or products.

The studies on Entrepreneurship performed in Brasil by the GEM - Global Entrepreneurship Monitor show that although Brazil is considered a country having a great number of entrepreneurs, the new companies are lesser innovative. GEM includes Brazil among the countries having low income and using technology developed in other countries. The present article seeks new theoretical fundaments that could explain the current lack of stimulus to create innovative companies in Brazil. We sought to understand: what kind of Entrepreneurship is there in Brazil? What are the theoretical fundaments which explain the entrepreneurial action low potential for innovating? How the entrepreneur actions are linked to the innovation concept and development? We started out by the hypothesis that the entrepreneurial initiative depends on a complex interactive pattern which intervenes in the scientific discovery process, and in the innovative activities and their implications, thus resulting in economic and social transformations. According to Schumpeter (1911), from the entrepreneurial activity point of view, the innovation process requires special qualities that are inherent to special individuals (the entrepreneurs). The entrepreneur unconventionally carries the change mechanisms. Nevertheless, in his book “Social Capitalism and Democracy”, admits that innovation is increasingly linked to the big corporation R&D laboratories, thus ascertain the entrepreneur fragility as a transformation individual agent within a oligopolistic capitalist economy: “Penrose, in his book “Company Growth Theory”, (1995, p. 31), connects the entrepreneur to the creation of a new business emphasizing, mainly, his function as an entrepreneur closely linked to an organization. In his works Michael Best deepened the explanatory theory fundaments on the entrepreneur actions by withdrawing the Entrepreneurship role from the shoulders of a sole individual and connecting innovation to entrepreneurial companies. Such concept is strengthened by the neo-Schumpeterian theory. According to Dosi (1988, p.222), the entrepreneurial activity comprehends seeking, discovering, developing, copying and accepting new products, new production processes or new organizational structures. In the knowledge society, Freeman’s thesis clearly shows that, such set of activities cannot be restricted to a sole individual or to a private organization. Now, Innovation is connected to an entrepreneurial environment, that’s to say to an innovation system in which learning and innovation happens through inter-relations between organizations. Knowledge is a learning social process spread through a tacit and codified knowledge. Such entrepreneurial environment is maintained by an institutional apparatus that is fluid and consolidates the cooperation and sustainability relations. The great concern regarding entrepreneurship development in Brazil is still focused on the need of governmental programs to stimulate and support the entrepreneurs and private companies. Issues such as the creation of an innovation system supported by an institutional apparatus to foment collective learning and the interconnection and cooperation to develop adequate technologies are not being yet emphasized by the development policies of new companies in Brazil.

The objective of this study is to identify technological capacities and innovative performance of technological base-resourced companies in the biotechnology sector. This is an exploratory research that uses the case study method. The data had been collected by means of direct observation, analysis documentation and interviews with the managing owners and directors of R&D of the biotechnology companies. Four Brazilian companies, two in Rio Grande Do Sul, one in São Paulo and the last one in Rio de Janeiro, were evaluated about the levels of technological qualification in three dimensions: (a) Technological base: characterization of the technical and human resources; (b) Technological strategy: position of the organization in the market and the style of management of the owner; (c) Innovation: qualification efforts and innovative performance. The results had demonstrated that the technological capacity depends mainly on the education level of the employees and their work experience. From the four companies studied, two of them generate new technologies, adopting offensive technological strategies. On the other hand, only one of the companies studied has a structured management and a participative and innovative good performance. Another important issue pointed by the four companies are the barriers for the development of innovations; in this sense, it stands out the regulation of new products, specifically the registration in governmental organs.

There have been many changes in the global economy in recent years. Conventional sources of competitive advantage have changed in many ways and there is an increasing focus on innovation. The focus on innovation has become a necessity prompted by several forces such as global competitive pressures, saturated markets, easier communication facilitating information flows, demanding and more knowledgeable customers, and technology advancements. In this environment, it is becoming more and more evident that the conventional view of capital or assets as those that are dependent upon tangible assets alone is not valid any longer. Land, machinery, access to raw materials and cash are not the only resources of an organization. Sources of competitive advantage increasingly relate specifically to knowledge and competence. These intellectual assets are intangible and there are organizations that possess only these assets, which are growing in numbers. The service economy is marked by the growing predominance of companies possessing these intellectual assets almost exclusively. In India, as in the rest of the globe, intellectual assets are increasingly playing a major role in transforming organizations. This paper attempts to draw out strategies that have been implemented successfully in the service economy in the Indian context.

In recent years, several Brazilian firms have conducted their R&D activities globally in order, on one hand, to be closer to the market and, on the other hand, to gain access to know-how, developing alliances with universities, providers, competitors and skilled human resources. In line with this trend, Petrobras, the Brazilian Oil Company, has improved its competitive strategy not only to ensure its domestic market leadership, but mainly to expand its participation abroad in relation to US companies. This paper aims at understanding the internationalization process of Petrobras’s R&D activities, in addition to analyzing its technological alliances. The study is qualitative and tries to throw some light upon a number of decisions made: why they were taken, what the process was and what were the results achieved. For collecting data, in addition to using the company’s internal documentation, we relied on interviews with Directors from Petrobras in charge of strategic technology decisions as well as on questionnaires addressed to Project Managers involved with internationalized cooperative projects. We hope that the discussions and conclusions contained herein may become a source of information for other companies, Brazilian or otherwise, that are undergoing similar R&D internationalization processes.

Governments play an important role in the transfer and development of technology.The intention in this paper is to explore the role governments in general and Iran in particular in the transfer of technology from Developed Countries. There are four parts. The first gives some general information on the role of governments in this process. the second examines the Iranaian government regulations on the transfer of technology. Legislation and the regulation of technology transfer in some selected Dcs are discussed in part three and part four derives some conclusion.

In this paper we focus on the different strategies used by companies during the process of development and diffusion of breakthrough technologies. We distinguish three phases in this process and show that, depending on the length of these phases, pioneers might be confronted with completely different scenarios just after the invention of a breakthrough technology. Different strategies to commercialise breakthrough technologies are also distinguished: a mass market strategy, a niche market strategy and a wait-and-see strategy. We show that the result of these strategies can diverge considerably depending on the scenarios. These strategies are studied in detail for the cases of the photocopier, video cassette recorder, digital camera and microwave oven. The focus in the case-studies is placed on the main actors in each phase and the strategy used by these actors during the phases. With regard to the strategies, we will look at customer segments and applications that the main actors aimed at during the process. Did these companies adopt a niche or a mass market strategy? We will also look at the timing of the strategies. Did these companies opt to move first or do they wait-and-see? Several conclusions are derived from the cases. The main actors involved in the development and diffusion of breakthrough technologies change considerably during different phases. The market adaptation phase is the most turbulent among all phases: many actors enter and leave the market over a relatively short period of time while making substantial losses. Customer segments and user applications also change considerably during the phases. Usually, niche markets emerge first, i.e. specific customer segments using the technology in specific applications, which diverge considerably from the mass market applications that emerge later. Pioneers of breakthrough technologies almost never create a mass market. The pioneers that do survive stick to their niche market strategy. After the pioneer, multiple entrants adopt a similar strategy, many of them have to leave the market later. Only a small number of them survives, either by consistently adopting a niche market strategy or by creating a mass market. The strategy of the entrants that manage to create a mass market will be discussed in more detail below. The management implications of these findings are large. Companies should be well aware of which phase they are in; their strategies need to be adapted to the phase of the process, strategies that appear to be successful in the market adaptation phase, for example, can be detrimental in a later phase. The results of the case studies also indicate that most successful actors consistently pursue one strategy.

For many companies, technology has become the vital factor to prevail in the stiff global competition. New technologies or new combination of technologies are the driving force of innovative products (technology push). The product innovation is also driven by market demands, which are considered as the catalyst of technological change (market pull). For the purpose of developing innovative products in both technology push and market pull environments, a modern technology management system is re-quired, which enables the automatic interaction between technologies and applications. In this context, the Heinz Nixdorf Institute has developed an innovative Technology Management Sys-tem, which is introduced in this paper. The core of this system is a relational Database, in which accu-mulated knowledge and emerging information of technologies and applications are stored. Each tech-nology fulfills certain functions; and each application is also based on a function structure. The rela-tional data model concerns a fixed list of generic functions. Technologies and applications are indirectly correlated through assignment of functions to both of them. Furthermore, this system allows various queries and visualizes their outputs in two major presentation forms automatically. An exemplary query is “Which applications are feasible in market segment X during 2008 to 2011 if we invest in technology Y?”. One of the technology presentation forms is a Technology Report, which offers information about technology and its applications in selectable formats and detail. The other visualization form is a Tech-nology Roadmap. A Technology Roadmap is a plan that shows which technology has been or could be used in which applications and at which time. Another highlight of this system is that, it uses bibliomet-ric analysis to procure knowledge from the ocean of information. The co-word-analysis provides such information as “In which context of application does technology xy increasingly occur in publications?”. This Technology Management System has already proven successful in several industrial projects. With the help of Technology Reports and Technology Roadmaps, the product developers and decision mak-ers are strongly supported within the product innovation process. The last part of this paper shows how to establish a firm-specific Technology Database in companies and how to integrate the Technology Database with product innovation considering both technology push and market pull effects.

Organizations have long sought how to achieve a competitive advantage in dynamic environments. However, the strategic management literature has espoused support for the external environment playing a moderator role in the organization-performance relationship. The literature supports the proposition that there is a fit between strategy, and performance, and the context in which an organization operates, i.e. the external environment. It has been suggested that organizations should consider the trade-offs between the external environment and strategic initiatives, and that the ability to co-align key behaviors with the competitive context ultimately determines business performance. Thus, we need to link what appear to be significant behaviors to the competitive realities of the environment in which the organization resides. It has been suggested that it would be useful to perform analyses which consider the joint effects of strategic orientations to better understand the conditions under which strategic orientation is particularly important for business performance. Earlier research has identified two important strategic orientations, market and entrepreneurial orientation, as firm’s distinct capabilities. Market orientation involves generation and dissemination of market intelligence that is composed of information about the external environment confronting an organization, sharing of this information among all functions in an organization and rapid managerial action in response to this information. A market oriented organization considers itself an open system, in that it emphasizes interaction with the environment as essential for its functioning. The positive relationship between market orientation and business performance is well established in the previous literature. Entrepreneurial orientation refers to a firm’s behavioral patterns that are recurring. It has been realized that firms can partake in entrepreneurial activity, and that such an orientation may lead to superior firm performance. Recent research on entrepreneurship has proposed that the linkage between entrepreneurial orientation and performance is not straightforward, but depends on prevailing environmental conditions. Thus, we consider market and entrepreneurial orientation as firm’s capabilities that collectively give rise to the sustainable competitive advantage, but whose effect on performance may be context dependent. We posit that market and entrepreneurial orientation can enhance success, but that their potential value should not be considered in isolation. Specifically, we draw on strategic orientations and environment-strategy-performance co-alignment theories to suggest that these capabilities each contribute to the creation of sustainable competitive advantage for some firms and that their effects are context dependent. The context studied here is technological environmental turbulence. We tested our environment-strategy-performance co-alignment model using a sample of 783 Finnish industrial international firms. Results support the proposition that there are ideal market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation that correspond to distinct competitive contexts. Results indicate that neither market orientation nor entrepreneurial orientation alone is sufficient predictor of performance under different levels of technological turbulence. Interestingly, market oriented behaviors (i.e., intelligence generation, dissemination, and responsiveness) contributed positively to performance only under high levels of technological turbulence, whereas dimensions of entrepreneurial oriented behaviors were significant predictors both in low and high turbulent environments. Additionally, the effects of strategic orientations were different for different performance indicators.

What has changed? First, standards for creating services and allowing them to communicate have evolved and are agreed to by major vendors in the industry. With major vendors in agreement and providing broad industry support, interoperability moves beyond simple connectivity toward interoperability. Second, infrastructure to support self defined, loosely-coupled services has emerged. Third, tools to incorporate existing assets are available. Finally, automation and virtualization solutions are available to manage the infrastructure. Service-Oriented-Architecuture is an infrastructure strategy that relies on Middleware, the connective tissue that binds together different applications so companies get more mileage out of the software they've spent untold dollars and man-hours to develop and maintain. SOA essentially "wraps" existing applications into services components in a way that lets them share data across a truly heterogenous environment. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is now a key strategic approach. Almost three years ago IBM announced its On Demand strategy, and you will find that integration is key to On Demand and SOA is that path to integration. You will also find that the Industry is moving towards Web Services as the primary technology for integration and building reusable services. This enables Business to work faster and more efficiently with the ability to integrate applications and information with citizens, partners and suppliers. Business need to think of an end-to-end integration of all processes. We will discuss the imperatives and integration challenges facing today's developers,IT projects and C-Level executives. We will take a look at how Middleware enables Service-Oriented-Architecture (SOA) and helps ease the pain in developing applications from a component based approach. The basic concepts of SOA and Web services are now part of our everyday language and recognized as a suitable architectural style for crafting modern enterprise applications. IBM's Software Strategy which based on Open Standards Middleware is designed to more easily integrate with customers existing systems, regardless of the underlying technology, allowing customers to grow from a single Web service to an enterprise wide SOA deployment. The underlying issues regarding "what makes good services" and how do I implement an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) has become increasingly critical for ensuring the successful implementation of SOA. IBM's Middleware enables the path to an Service-Oriented-Architecture approach that can help you with your Innovation strategies and Business Integration efforts.

There is a pressing call for a new concept that thrives upon rather than deals with product diversification and personalization. The “one size fit” model is out-of-date; it doesn’t represent the dominant part of the market anymore. Today’s customers are better informed and more demanding. They want to be treated as individuals, and are prepared to pay an extra price for that. Such “individualization” comes at a high price to the industrial system. Industry responded by a variety of systems, such as quality initiatives, lean and agile manufacturing systems, and mass customization to cope up with the varying changes. Mass customization (MC) was initiated to benefit from the economies of scale while satisfying the growing customization market. The number of organization and companies adopting MC is growing in various sectors. A major factor in boosting MC is the gigantic advances in technology. Examples for such technologies are: Information Technology, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, and internet capabilities which help establishing an efficient customer-to-producer relationship. Other technological advances such as: flexible manufacturing, automated manufacturing system and rapid manufacturing contribute to the realization customization in a MC system. Owing to such technologies, venturing the market with highly customizable products is becoming feasible, relatively cheaper and faster. This results into a wider market and a more satisfied customer. This paper examines the enabling technologies and their impact on the success of MC systems. Through a study, two technological components have been identified to have the most impact on MC. The first is the technology that supports the customer-producer interface or communication. The second involves technologies that enable the manufacturing of a wide range of product variants in cost and time effective manner. It was found that for consumable products and despite impressive advances, the manufacturing technology is in need for “breakthroughs” to match that in the customer-producer interface for an efficient MC system. To measure the impact of the technological advances on MC, three industries, which are amenable for customization, were selected and analyzed. Those industries are: The footwear, the garment industries and the housing industries. This study measures the correlation between technology and the degree of customization that those industries were able to implement. While it is hard to measure the degree of customization for varying industries, it was necessary to identify a generic unit to measure the degree of customization that considers the number of modules and the degree of interface with other modules in an integrated product. Initial results indicate that the number of industries applying MC is increasing, exerting higher pressure on system developers for more efficient system designs in support of MC. This study and its findings should benefit academicians as well as practitioners interested in the integration of technology, business and production strategies.

Global pulp and paper industry is undergoing a major change in its business strategy. Due to the comparative advantages of different countries, such as raw material cost and market potential, firms are developing global manufacturing and sourcing strategies nowadays. In pulp and paper industry (PPI) many international firms are investing in manufacturing in China due to its huge market potential. This raises interesting questions concerning the orchestration of value chain in this emerging market. The local supply of raw material, especially wood based pulp, does not cover the increasing demand. This means new technological innovations or international sourcing. In this paper, we use collected data in the Chinese PPI industry to describe current determinants of creating competitive advantage in various parts of value chain of PPI in China. The focus is on the increasing demand and production volumes of Chinese PPI which does not have a strong raw material basis. This means that the sourcing can be in central role in creating competitive advantage in this emerging business in China. The result of this study provides aid to PPI firms to make strategic decisions.

Location selection for global expansion is one of the most important factors leading to the success of foreign direct investment. As was know that China has become the world factory, hence this case study will focus on the factors affecting plant location selection in China for the TFT-LCD panel industry. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method was used to find out the relative weights of TFT-LCD panel plant location factors (aspects and criteria). The AHP method with four evaluation aspects and twelve criteria were adopted to determine the optimal TFT-LCD panel plant location. According to this study, the result shows that the rank of the aspects which impacts the plant location selection is supply chain circumstance, regional incentive, labor and manufacturing resources. The criterion which impacts the plant location selection in order are material and component suppliers, tax deduction, down-stream firms, working experience of labor, bank loan, wage, electricity supply, water supply, quantity of labor, transportation and financial aid.

Since the middle of the 1990s, China’s software industry has achieved conspicuous advancements as demonstrated in its world highest increase in number of papers on software in the international journals and IT software spending. Such software innovation can be attributed to its unique institutional systems. At the same time, rapid development in China’s software industry induced dramatic increase in software outsourcing from Japan to China, which in turn stimulated further development of China’s software industry leading to constructing a co-evolutionary dynamism. On the basis of the foregoing observations, this paper attempted to analyze institutional structure governing the potential of software development in China, thereby institutional factors essential for the software development are identified. In addition, co-evolutionary dynamism of software outsourcing between Japan and China was elucidated by utilizing the concept of substitution.

Year 2002 was a critical turning point of the Internet industry in China: Major Chinese websites began to break even and make profits in this year. Among the driving factors of this turning, the effective integration of mobile phone service with the Internet applications has played a vital role. Successful examples such as mobile phone doing online payment, SMS stimulating the Internet use and creating revenues, and the use of IP telephone system in mobile environment have been seen in the last few years. With the fast development of technologies and the dramatic increase of the user numbers in both industries, more opportunities are seen for future cooperation between these two industries to stimulate further growth and better serve people in China. This paper sheds a light on critical technologies in this environment through use of technology foresight. Technology foresight is a process to identify critical technologies to develop in order to shape a desired future. In this paper, a two-stage technology foresight model is proposed. The first stage is to identify critical technologies through expert judgment, and the second stage is to set related parameters by carrying out experiments on a system dynamics model. The focus of this paper is on the second stage: to demonstrate the application of system dynamics model in technology foresight. An example of building a system dynamics model to foresee the Voice and Video over Wireless Area Network (VVoWLAN) technology in China is shown in detail. In doing so, the VVoWLAN technology is assumed to be the critical technology identified from the first stage of the foresight activity.

Many scholars have reviewed the literature of information technology in the service sector and the success or failure of particular technology solutions. Research has identified the most important issues in IT planning and implementation (Beaumaster, 1999). The research has also determined the stages of IT adoption in organizations (Rogers, 1962; Davis, 1986). A review of published studies lacked investigations into how IT planning and IT implementation issues affect the IT diffusion in higher education organizations. This project examines the IT planning and implementation issues as well as IT diffusion issues in a specific academic environment, that of Portland Community College (Portland, Oregon). Portland Community is the largest college in Oregon. Like any educational institution, PCC struggles to keep pace with the latest technologies by anticipating and implementing new technology solutions in efficient and effective deployments. The PCC IT managers and employees were asked to complete a survey which included questions concerning IT planning, implementation and diffusion. The responses to the questionnaires were then analyzed with statistical tools and the results are presented below. This paper also presents the findings accompanied by relevant interpretations and possible explanations.

The program STARegio – "Structure Improvement of the Training in Selected Regions" – is provided in governmental sponsorship and supports the generation of additional training (apprenticeship) positions in selected branches with several subprojects. The emphasis of encouragement activities is concentrated in regions of West Germany, which show insufficient training offers and in which economic development potential is available. Therefore, the STARegio projects align their subprojects accurately applying to the regional needs and the socio-economic conditions. The subproject "new4new" (new faces for new chances) recruits training enterprises, which are operating in high technology industries with emphasis on Micro and Nano Technology (MNT), biotechnology, and optical technology. It also helps recruiting suitable apprentices for these enterprises. In the years 2005 and 2006, as part of the project new4new, a study was conducted on determining current and future needs for high tech training positions. In particular, the growing shortage of specialists was investigated, as was the influence of lacking training capacities contributing to it. Furthermore, the aim of this study is to acquire the opinions and the motivation referring to training positions of the responsible employees in the examined enterprises. About 500 companies were contacted in the first part of this study at the end of 2005 and received a questionnaire to find out characteristics of these companies, the current and future expected need for trained high tech specialists as well as their behavior concerning training positions and information needs about apprenticeship. To enhance the return of completed questionnaires, the companies were contacted also by e-mail and by phone. Open questions, which occurred during the evaluation of the questionnaires in the first part of the study, as well as interesting facts were analyzed more precisely in the second part of this study. In this second part, six of these companies were selected for more detailed interviews. The goal was to more deeply investigate their individual reasons for training (three “good practice” examples) or not (three potential oriented examples). After having been executed from May to July 2006, this part of the study is analyzed from August to September 2006. These six companies were selected by using a previously determined set of criteria. The first three companies chosen are standing for “good practice” cases, small and midsize enterprises (SME) willing to and engaging in training. The other three were SME principally capable of starting training programs but not committed to do so. The study intends to motivate, inform, and support enterprises interested in establishing internal training positions, to alert on expected shortage of specialists, and also intends to encourage a successful collaboration with the regional companies. Furthermore, new4new contributes to the coordination and expansion of new and existing training groups, in particular for smaller enterprises. Based on the results of the study, new4new offers support to enterprises by an external training management including all issues arising when training places were arranged.

Germany expects a shortage of technically trained personnel, due to a low birth rate generation approaching the age of employment. Germany’s net reproduction rate (100% meaning constant population numbers) dropped from 120% in 1968 to a dramatic 68% in 1998 [1]. Particularly in the field of Engineering Sciences, universities are expecting a substantial shortage of students. As a consequence, Germany, which has an excellent apprenticeship system, plans to tab into the reservoir of skilled workers and technicians to reinforce the rank of engineering students. For providing an incentive for skilled industrial workers to joining the universities for engineering studies, particular skills and qualifications acquired by the workers shall be recognized by credit points accepted in lieu of respective courses. One particularly practical area for such an approach is studies in high technology fields like Micro and Nano Technology (MNT). For that reason, the Institute for Microtechnology (imt) at the Leibniz Universitaet Hannover has started a research activity funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the program ANKOM (Recognition of Professional Competencies at Universities): it is developing a system for awarding credit points for acknowledging industry qualifications and which university courses they may be debited against. MNT are fields, which in particular lend themselves for implementing such a system. First, compared to other fields, there are very few people working in and experienced at these fields. Second, a major portion of the curriculum covers equipment and process issues, which can be substituted by practical knowledge. The project ProfIS (Professional Improvement by Study) initiated by the imt aims at considering competencies in vocational training and employment for an academic grade. The goal of the project is to find a qualification methode for students with prior vocational education and work experience, particularly in the MNT fields, but also in Mechatronics, recognizing practical knowledge and converting it into credit points. As outlined before, this approach provides an incentive for skilled industrial workers to join the universities as engineering students, particular skills and qualifications acquired by the workers shall be recognized by credit points accepted instead of respective courses. For the universities, this project opens an opportunity for tabbing into the reservoir of skilled workers and technicians to reinforce the rank of engineering students. In our case, the effective model of the recognition of professional qualifications will bring great advantages to both systems, vocational and academic. For skilled workers and technicians, this is the opportunity to develop their own profiles by studying further, with the acknowledgement of their previous qualifications, and to get higher positions in their companies. It also enables new ways of livelong learning. For universities, it creates an extra pool of potential students. And, last but not least, for companies, the project provides possibilities to advance skilled workers. This paper outlines the concept suggested and discusses the challenges in incorporating a system for Microtechnology within the course structure for studies of Mechanical Engineering at the Leibniz Universitaet Hannover in Hanover, Germany. [1] http://www.antikoerperchen.de/deutsch/material-1.php

The Project "Model knowledge administration for work's diffusion of the investigation groups, based in semantic web services of the Distrital University" consists on the elaboration of a schema that demonstrates the diffusion and knowledges appropriation of the Investigation-Research Groups. The project is divided in several phases that will allow integrating, by means of a prototype, the Functional Outline, the Technological Platform based on Semantic Web Services and a Contents Diffusion System and information which allows the publication of works and documents of each one of the investigation groups. The first phase consists on develops a foundation of the Investigation, the outline of the project, Bibliographical Analysis and Information Gathering. Next, we make an analysis and the evaluation of different Management Models of Knowledge existent. The second phase consists on the outline of the Management Knowledge model, which will make by means of an Organizational Analysis and a Strategic Analysis. It will be composed by a map, communities and knowledge processes, making a Functional Schema for the Investigation-Research Groups. Finally a prototype of Knowledge Portal will be implement where is evaluated if the Technology Supports the functional schema, the Interaction System and of Diffusion of Information. Then we will be defined the RUP like development methodology of the components for the Knowledge Portal.

Responding to customer demands is one of the key elements of successful marketing management. Competitive pressures from globalization, however, have forced firms to make every effort for streamlining and rationalization of the workflow. For many industry sectors, the dominant paradigm has been to shift labour-intensive manufacturing to countries with significantly lower labour costs in order to decrease product prices. At the same time, shortened response times in the new product development process have become increasingly important for being able to fulfil customers demands quickly. Admittedly, a rapid response is made difficult if outsourcing of operations or long lead times have decreased organizational flexibility considerably. Moreover, as more and more firms have engaged in competition based on price/cost advantages the development of rapid response capabilities is an important way to overcome such kind of competition through speed and flexibility (Berger, 2006).

The development of new technology in the paint industry is necessary to ensure sustainable business venture driven by conservation requirements and environmental regulations. This paper reviews the development of a new polymer emulsion designed to replace titanium dioxide pigment in paints. Based on a survey of user and manufacturer representatives, the study examined market requirements for such a new polymer pigment in paints. From the respondent feedback, it was apparent that final consumers were mostly concerned with the weathering characteristics and could not distinguish between the technical properties of paints.

In this paper we will report findings related to new product development (NPD) decision making modus operandi from an ongoing study on NPD management process. The research adopts grounded theory method using interview as the primary data source on sixteen senior managers from six technology-based organizations in Malaysia. Our in-depth discovery study revealed that senior managers apply two distinctive modus operandi in making NPD related decisions which suggests organizational decision making efficiency; “thrashing” and “bolstering”. Thrashing is defined as a concept representing a series of seemingly organized urges and efforts to ensure decision problem, decision alternatives and/or decision choices are justly articulated, reasoned and scrutinized. Bolstering is defined as a concept representing a series of seemingly organized urges and efforts to enhance the appeal of decision choices. We propose a framework of NPD decision making modus operandi which increases our understanding of NPD decision making process and facilitates theory generation in the area of NPD management. Although the insights from this study are not statistically generalizable, the proposed framework can analytically reflect similar cases, and can also be used for future researches to build on and refine. This study also brings awareness to NPD management practitioners on the opportunity to improve the efficiency of NPD decision making by eliminating chances for bolstering.

The leitmotiv in the industry's speech today is that innovation is “the solution” to ensure companies’ survival and prosperity in front of competitive environment. But what are we really talking about ? If we can now find a consensus on one aspect of the innovation concept (it is both a result and a process of evolution), the theme of its evaluation (or their evaluations?) is more complex and fuzzier due to the diversity of the nature of the information needed to create metrics. Indeed, innovation is, at microeconomic level, a search to adapt a new activity, and then the company will have to ensure its stability and expansion on the market (DERT, 1997; AFUAH, 1999; TURRIAGO, 2002). At the macroeconomic level, countries implemented actions in order to activate, to encourage and to develop innovation, to make the necessary adjustments needed to increase through various types of assistances and stimulations for its starting (AMABLE et al., 1997). Consequently, it becomes important to know if the actions carried out to increase the capacity of innovation are efficient and effective; it’s to say, if at the end, the resources brought for the deployment of the innovation in a company prove to be justified. As a result, many researches were done in order to develop tools allowing innovation performance evaluation. After a positioning of the innovation concept definitions, we will propose a metric of innovation process. Then, based on a 5 years research work, we will show how, using a systemic process modeling of innovation in three poles : Strategy, Piloting, Igniting (BOLY, 2004), a company can have a very simple self assessment tool to evaluate its overall innovation performance. Then, based on the previous results, it will be able to ask the researcher for a multicriteria (COLETTE, 2002) technological innovation process audit more complete and more targeted : product, process or organization.

The deep processes of world globalization – even more in evidence generates, among countless other factors, the tough competitiveness in economic sectors, as well as the growth in the opportunity spectrum for the capital investment in the “Emerging Countries Market”. Market segments such as New Product Launching Projects, Engineering Outsourcing Services, Information Technology Systems, Work Systems and New Processes become more and more competitive. The use of consistent methodologies is demanded from companies when managing such projects, focusing on reducing and more effectively controlling costs, lead times as well as the quality of the project itself. We can identify several actions taken to reduce costs, and new tools are used evermore by Project Managers, mainly to manage different project costs, along their life cycle. Most projects are managed without the use of suitable methodologies and or managing models to follow, causing many and significant financial losses to such projects. From this perspective, this study analyzes one of the areas of knowledge in Project Management, which is Cost Management, and identify as well as creating a new measuring model, which will make it possible to physically measure the progress of each project. This new model, together with relevant information from the initial forecasted budget and incurred costs, will make it available to the Project Manager, more accurate and vital information when it comes to deadlines and costs, which will help in the decision process. The EVMS, (Earned Value Management System) methodology and the Percentage Completion Method, (a method that attributes a determined percentage of Project completion (between 0 and 100%), at each control cycle), were applied at the implementation of this new measuring model of Physical Project Advance, at an industrial project. The results have proved the viability of this new model, when measuring Physical Project Advance, not only at each work package level, but also as a Project as a whole.

Past research has pointed out that there may be a limit to the improvement of internal effectiveness within a certain system at a particular time. As a company goes through improvement projects and as the improvements that show the greatest savings potential have been run, improvement opportunities become smaller and smaller. In this article we put forward the hypothesis that, at some point, in order to further reduce the unit cost of product, an extension of the system limits is sometimes needed, so that new large improvements become possible within the extended system. We argue that radical improvement in the past has many times involved the extension of the system that is worked on, so that a larger mass of cost can be taken into account when the benefits of improvements are calculated. We use examples from logistics and supply chain management and from the printing industry, where a transformation from offset to digital printing is currently taking place.

The articulation of polycentric networks is one response to the challenges of managing complex projects, involving many organizations. This work is based on a case study that explored the influence of networks on project management, focusing on the setting up of an emergency thermal power station by a consortium of companies, among which were Promon, a major Brazilian corporation working in systems integration and technology project management. A network has certain characteristics that have an influence on project management processes. These characteristics include great flexibility in power arrangements, a lack of identity in the project group, whose members, in general, remain loyal to the companies they come from, power ambiguities and culture and interest shocks. The influence of these characteristics is very much more observed in the way in which the processes are carried out than in their content. Integration, communication and human resources are the three variables (or areas of project management knowledge) most affected, while the management of costs and timescales is less affected. This leads us to believe that the social, psychological or subjective content aspects are more affected by the network of organizations than aspects that involve exact techniques and tools.

Project management research shows that most projects today fail. You may think that projects fail because of poor planning; lack of communication, or inadequate resources; but as the evidence suggests, failure is often found even in well-managed projects, run by experienced managers, and supported by highly regarded organizations. This paper will show that the current practices of project management are insufficient to guarantee project success. It will present the current myth and the reality of project management and will offer a new paradigm and a new language to deal with today’s projects. The current, standard, and formal approach to project management is based on a predictable, fixed, relatively simple, and certain model. It is also generally decoupled from the changes in the environment or the business needs; once you created the project plan, this plan sets out the objectives for the project, and the project manager must execute the plan, using a “management-as-planned” philosophy. After the project is launched, progress and performance are assessed against the plan and changes to the plan should be rare, and if possible avoided. The reality is that projects are business-related processes that must deliver business results. They are not predictable or certain. Rather, they involve a great deal of uncertainty and complexity, and they must be managed in a flexible and adaptive way. Planning is adjustable and changing, and as the project moves forward, re-planning is often necessary. And project management styles must adapt to the specific project and its requirements. While this approach represents a shift in thinking, it is inevitable to meet today’s organizational challenges.

The adoption of an appropriate sales forecasting method is one of the key success factors of a business firm. The logistic model, the Gompertz model and a series innovation diffusion models which is based on the Bass (1969) model are usually adopted to forecast the growth trend and potential market volume of innovative products, if they have historical data. However, while all of these models rely on a statistical point of view to explain the relationships between dependent and independent variables, their parameters are all crisp. Sometimes, fuzzy relationships are more appropriate for describing the relationships between dependent and independent variables. Hence, we combine fuzzy regression with logistic model, Gompertz model and Bass model to develop a quadratic interval Gompertz model, a quadratic interval logistic model and a quadratic interval Bass diffusion model and apply them to some cases. The results show that these models can provide more information to decision-makers.

In today's increasingly competitive business environment, where 6-sigma quality process is no longer a differentiator, outsourcing to lower cost nations is universal, enterprises are looking for new ways to differentiate themselves from competitors and succeed in the market place. As innovation adoption becomes the new measure of organizational effectiveness, companies have a constant need to assess the impact of technology innovation on current business models and initiatives. IBM Research has developed an innovative signpost-based approach to technology innovation forecasting at the strategic initiative level. This approach differs from the traditional roadmap approach by identifying signposts that provide early warning for disruptive changes. The goal is to prepare the enterprise for the unexpected. A signpost is a recognizable potential future event that signals a change of significance to the enterprise. Recognizable means reasonable people would agree on whether the event has occurred. Thus a signpost requires much more discipline and specificity than an idea or a vision. We categorize signposts into 5 areas: technological, social, economic, political, and environmental. Typical techniques we use to identify good quality signposts include the following three steps: (1) locate a vision area (cluster of ideas describing a potential future) in which to look for the signpost; (2) create a landscape model of the vision area using advanced information mining (text analytics) tools on available data sources; and (3) convert an idea of high significance (as seen from step 2) into the description of a recognizable potential future event. The best signposts are those that are evidently actionable. We examine several examples validated by retrospective case studies. Finally we describe an automatic monitoring mechanism for the subset of signpost events that can be detected using existing text analytics tools. We leave the detection of wider classes of signpost events as a challenge for information mining researchers.

The purpose of the paper is to present experiences using a forecasting tool, the Delphi method, to explore the dynamics between traditional industries and emerging new industries and potential discontinuities and to analyse the future business environment of printed functionality. The Delphi technique uses expert feedback to refine an informed perspective on complex and uncertain issues. The primary source of information for the printed functionality and hybrid media industries evolution were collected in expert interviews and two round Delphi study in the end of year 2006. The Delphi method was chosen because of its advantage to capture multiple experts in a panel that gathers views from experts about a certain theme. The knowledge of chosen industry experts consists both deep vertical knowledge and wide horizontal knowledge including representatives of the following groups: experts in printed functionality (specialist), industry experts from universities and research institutes (generalist), and business managers and executives (industry). The paper provides insights how industry convergence and technological trajectories affect to the evolution of industries. Our analysis focuses especially on examining discrepancies and strives for expanded knowledge base rather than consensus. Printed functionality represents one promising opportunity for paper companies to find new uses for fibre-based materials and a possibility to lead the industry into a new era of products. Printed functionality can be characterised as an internally driven competence-enhancing innovation for traditional paper companies, which can change the dominant design in the existing industry. Printed functionality is an emerging technology area and prior research in this area is limited, as is work using Delphi method. The anticipatory character of Delphi studies can, through a sharing knowledge and experience, augment understanding within the expert group. Finland has a good chance to gain a significant role globally in printed functionality development, especially in areas related to current forest industry. Keywords: Industry evolution, printed functionality, Delphi method, ICT, paper industry

With the increasingly free flow of capital, technology and human resources, the technology-based industries in developing countries are rapidly expanding. In response to the ever more severe competition, the technology-based companies are intensifying their effort not only to improve the production efficiency and the product quality but also to focus on the innovation as an important element to ensure long-term competitive advantage. On the other hand, as the public concern on corporate social responsibility has been growing, technology-based industries are required to ensure the safety and the sense-of-security of their products and services. The guarantee of not only their own service but also various services constructed on their service becomes a mandatory for the technological infrastructure industries such as information and communication. New technological infrastructures are currently invented and designed focusing only on their merits, and their demerits are found only after they are implemented. Those demerits are fixed by ad-hoc manner. For example, the internet has been introduced to the society without comprehensive risk analysis; the society consequently has to put tremendous efforts to handle various unforeseen misuses and shortcomings of the internet such as invasion of privacy, information leak and frauds. Inefficiency and limitations of these “end-of-pipe” and/or “repair” approach is prevalent. However, a drastic reduction of demerits or side-effects is possible if safety and sense-of-security aspects are taken into account in the early phases of technological information infrastructure design because there are more potentials of improvement there. This paper proposes a future-creation-oriented innovation process that helps create an image of an ideal society based on the technological information infrastructure, set the requirements and measurable specifications for the technological information infrastructure, followed by developing the accompanying social infrastructure. A layered technological architecture model to visualize social and technological concepts and their interactions is proposed as follows. At the top, Level 6 is for the society model to express various aspects of ideal society such as safety and sense of security. Level 5 is to model the social functions to enable an ideal society. Level 4 is to model various services to achieve social functions. Level 3 is to model modules and equipments consisting services expressed in Level 4. Level 2 is to model technological infrastructure such as communications and information services. Level 1 is to model a social infrastructure including legal, social and institutional system as a basis of technological infrastructure. A future-creation-oriented innovation process is divided into 4 steps: Set a ideal target society, Identify enabling social functions for example to make people feel sense of security when they use various services based on the technological infrastructure, Identify the specifications of modules and systems to satisfy the above mentioned enabling social functions, Identify the specifications of technological as well as social infrastructure. In addition, a risk analysis is carried out on the technological infrastructure to assess misuses and malicious usages, the results of risk analysis and possible counter measures are feedback to the specifications of technological infrastructure. A future-creation-oriented innovation process makes it possible to design an inherently safe technological infrastructure.

Considering the growth potential of radical innovations (RI), senior leadership at large firms is challenged to tap RI. As a means to incubate and develop RI, establishing a corporate venture unit within large firms is widely propagated by academics and consultants. Substantial research has been done on this subject, covering topics such as corporate venturing, new venture divisions and venture groups, yet several firms have failed in their venturing efforts and booked substantial losses. Many venturing units, including those at British Telecom, Lucent, Xerox, Kudu and Vodafone, have closed down; while others are struggling to justify their continued existence. A review of corporate venturing within large firms indicates that out of 95 independent units studied in 2001, only 55 remained in 2003. In contrast, venturing at firms like Shell, Nokia and IBM is thriving, and has done well for more than a decade. Since its inception, IBM’s Emerging Business Opportunity program has produced 5 multi-billion dollar businesses (including Life Sciences, Pervasive computing and Linux). Over 30% of Shell’s Exploratory Research projects have their origin in GameChanger, while Shell Technology Ventures has developed over 18 new start-up companies which bring in strategic returns for Shell. Two of Nokia’s four current business groups – ‘Multimedia’ and ‘Enterprise solution’ were born from the work done at Nokia’s venturing arm – Nokia Venture Organisation. This gives rise to the following questions: Why do most venturing initiatives fail, and only some survive? How can a company establish a venture capability that survives successfully? What lessons can executives learn from companies like Shell, Nokia and IBM? We present three key elements for an effective venture capability based on a review of academic literature, a thorough analysis of the successful venture capabilities of Shell, Nokia and IBM, and a study of some venturing initiatives that have been terminated. These three key elements are: carrying out a thorough necessity analysis, achieving clarity of objectives and creating the right ambiance for the venture initiative to thrive. We found that the likelihood of a venturing initiative to be successful, and to survive, increase if companies are able to apply these three elements and craft their own logical interplay between them. Weakness in, or a lack of, one of these key elements will seriously affect the effectiveness of venturing in the long term.

The present article aims at identifying the barriers and motivators concerning the agents that comprise the Campo Largo – PR cluster. The theoretical reference supporting this article is the Triple Helix developed by Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (1997), which is used to assess technological innovation as a result of the interaction between agents: government, industry and universities. Field research was carried out through the Campo Largo Earthenware Cluster case study, in the State of Paraná – Brazil. This Cluster accounts for 90% of the domestic production, generating around 4,000 direct and indirect jobs in the State of Paraná. Data collection was carried out through semi-structured questions divided in two blocks; the first one focused the cooperation activities between agents and the second the barriers and motivators found in the cluster. We carried out fourteen technical visits in seven industries: two large, three small and two medium-size industries. We also interviewed one raw-material supplier in most of the industries, two industry representative entities, two governmental organizations and two universities. Data was collected between October and November 2006. The main barriers to cooperation between agents were: family company culture with individual actions strongly based on values and habits transmitted through generations; distance existing between industries, universities and government institutions, so researches and agreements are carried out due to professor and student initiatives; geographical distance from universities and lack of project compatibility concerning industry timing and needs. The main cooperation motivators identified were related to some jointly performed actions which have already shown concrete results, such as the national award for a piece of work produced by the cluster and the agreement to build a ceramic technological laboratory. These actions were proposed by the government or by universities and when carried out could provide a friendly environment for promoting institutional infra-structure, and trust and interest on the industries part. Based on the initial supposition that agent interaction is essential for the cluster to be successful, it is important to identify a managerial structure that could provide governance conditions for the cluster. The first step to overcome the aforementioned barriers is to assign the right people to perform functions with specific objectives, such as promoting closeness between agents, disclosing the actions carried out by the cluster, assuring a greater community participation in development and financing public projects, and in other projects that may be of interest to the cluster.

The main objective of this research is to review various knowledge, knowledge management, knowledge supporting organizational cultures, knowledge sharing, and knowledge centered communities of practice trends found in quite diverse literatures such as research journals, practitioners publications, and conference proceedings. The central research questions of this research work address the key attributes, competencies and activities that support, strengthen, and enhance successful knowledge management practices, knowledge supporting organizational cultures, knowledge sharing, and knowledge centered communities of practice in high-tech and engineering oriented organizations. Further, this study seeks to identify the relevant factors that facilitate or impede effective and efficient knowledge management practices in these organizations. Under Michael Earl’s “taxonomy of strategies, or ‘schools,’ for knowledge management” [Earl, 2001, p. 215] and Kakabadse, Kouzmin, and Kakabadse models of knowledge management [Kakabadse, Kouzmin, and Kakabadse, 2001, p. 142], this research work intends to provide a novel and different approach to study various knowledge management concepts related to high-tech and engineering oriented organizations found in the literature. In reviewing and classifying several knowledge, knowledge management, knowledge supporting organizational cultures, knowledge sharing, and knowledge centered communities of practice research papers according to these two knowledge management frameworks, this paper depicts a snapshot of current research efforts in these knowledge management topics. Similarly, on the practitioners publications and conference proceedings side, it is important to identify the organization’s challenge(s) being addressed by the field of knowledge management and the strategies being implemented to mitigate and/or solve these challenges. Of equal importance, it is the identification of critical success factors in implementing these knowledge management strategies. As a result, the findings of this research work will suggest to researchers and practitioners on the field of knowledge management new avenues of research which need to be developed and/or strengthened in high-tech and engineering oriented organizations.

The prevailent perception is that the transfer of technology commonly occurs between developed and developing economies with the former acting as the source and the latter the recipient. Whilst there may be abundant examples supporting this perception, however, there are numerous cases of technology transfer between developing countries, and the issues at stake can be quite different from the conventional negotiation arguments. This paper presents a case study of an actual technology transfer transaction between two developing countries. Using a structured questionnaire, the case study examines the actual issues that formed the basis of the negotiations and highlights the impact of assumed positions and misinterpretation of differing legal contexts on the technology transfer transaction.

Client satisfaction is the ultimate goal of professional service firms (PSFs). However, according to a 2006 revealed China Business Consulting Client Satisfactory Survey, the satisfactory rate is significantly low and only a small proportion of clients implemented the consulting results from PSFs. Can business management consulting (BMC) firms really tame knowledge in their service? This study seeks answers by exploring the practices of BMC in China. This paper identifies through knowledge management (KM) process those factors that help or handicap the effectiveness and efficiency of implementation and integration between the consulting results and clients. This research aims to explain the implementation gaps between BMC service provider and the clients by examining the KM practice. Although it is general agreed that knowledge is the lifeblood of consulting firms, relations between consulting service and client satisfactory affected by KM process is seldom studied by researchers, especially in China context. Followed by introduction and literature review, this paper provides a solid foundation for further analysis. Firstly, comparisons of BMC survey results from Canada, and Australia are made; secondly, the nature of BMC service is explained; thirdly, KM models and BMC models are examined. Mixed research approach enables this research to present a framework of KM in BMC. This paper is an explorative study with a focus on China BMC’s practices. Based on conceptive framework discussed in literature review, the research methodology of this paper includes two steps. Firstly, it examines the results of two KM Survey conducted in China and analysis the factors that impacts the service from BMC; then Elite Actor Survey conducted in five Beijing BMC firms to explore those key factors having impacts on implementation and client satisfactory in KM process. KM as a process plays a critical role in the implementation of business consulting service to the clients. An effectively and efficient managed KM from BMC to clients contains several key factors, both from the PSFs side and the client side. This research proposes a practical model that may help to narrow the implementation gap and overcome the problem in client satisfactory. After explanation of limitation, the final section concludes with implications of findings for research and management practice. This paper offers new analytical perspective in the implantation gaps between BMC service and client satisfactory. The KM process model in China BMC service in this study deepened the understanding of how KM plays a critical role in BMC practices and what are the key factors in client satisfactory and implantation gaps. From service provider to client aspect, this paper explains some reasons caused low satisfactory rate in China. Given the lack of research examining this field, this paper provides suggestions to BMC practitioners and offers a new model to examine the BMC service implementation gaps.

China has been demonstrating a conspicuous economic growth since the economic reform started in 1978. It can be attributed to its unique transitional institution system including shifting to a market economy, rapid industrialization and urbanization, as well as dramatic reforms of its educational system. It is clear that the quality of human resources and the level of urbanization have lagged behind its gross economy in comparison to other competitors. However, it is noted that the conspicuous developments of education and urbanization in the last two decades have been the primary institutional factors in accelerating economic growth and will continue to play this important role in the future based on their developing potential. Accompanying with the rapid growth of national economy, the development of regional economies has been very divergent, which has attracted much attention of many academic researchers and Chinese policymakers. Taking China’s economic development in each respective 31 regions over the last two decades, this research focuses on the empirical analysis which indicates that China’s nationwide economic development has shifted from an inter-regional homogeneity to an inter-regional heterogeneity to welcome the global shift from industry society to information society since the 1990s. Based on the macro institutional analysis and micro regional heterogeneity analysis, the co-evolutionary dynamism between regional heterogeneous economic development and institutional structure is expected to be demonstrated in this research.

Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) have been developing fast in China since late 90s, the last century. However, research about China’s service industry is very rare. Specifically, very little has been done on the topic of “Innovation determinants of KIBS”. This paper tries to find the determinants based on two month’s online survey and interviews to Chinese KIBS enterprisers. The study is based on the two months’ online survey about the kinds of China’s KIBS companies taken from July 15 to September 20, 2006. There were 88 companies responded and there were 71 valid questionnaires. The analyses of the data (such as Correlative Analysis, Factor Analysis and Regression Analysis) are being done by SPSS in the aim of figuring out the relationship within the factors designed in the model. There are already some findings from the interviews such as: lower cost of knowledge and information transformation or delivery, the capacity of resource integrating, also the study ability and awareness of innovation of the company founders.

The objective of this study is to examine the methodology used in teaching an online engineering management course in two different technology modes for two different universities. Although no ideal model of distance education exists, several models are innovative for very different reasons. Philosophical approaches to distance education differ. Some researchers and practitioners feel that to be successful, distance education must replicate face to face classroom interaction. Others assert that learner characteristics diminish the need for real-time interaction. In delivering online courses the faculty member is key for the content. Communication, interactivity with students, and removing obstacles to the student’s learning may be the responsibility of the faculty member or of the delivery system, which is the pipeline for presenting the instruction, and good instruction can be designed for any delivery system. In this study the content of the two courses is the same. One course is upper level undergraduate and the other is lower level graduate. Both courses are delivered at a distance. The difference is the mode of delivery. As technology is constantly changing, faculty need to concentrate on the content design for all types of delivery systems and the delivery system is dependent on the institution.

The public service is differed from the given ones for private organizations, because it´s respect to a collective interest of the society. It is necessary to work the quality of the same ones so that the benefit is reflected in the society. For in such a way, the investments in professional qualification become preponderant, a time that, for intermediary of the actions of qualification, the people tend to be more qualified and in consequence more competent for the exercise of their functions. The formation of managers in the public environment makes possible that the resources are used with bigger efficiency, and the results generate improvements for the community. Brazil, it is given credit that a deepened professional formation can be gotten through the accomplishment of formation courses in a superior level. Evidences a difficulty for people with minor to be able of income, as well as it has much time distant of the pertaining to school banks to attend a course superior education in actual the public and gratuitous universities. In the case of the state of Santa Catarina five hundred actual vacant per year for the course of graduation in Administration are offered in the public universities approximately. The search for such courses, it´s twenty times bigger of the number of vacant.This means that only few people have access to a gratuitous formation. An option is the ingression in private institutions of superior education, that, according to Universia. The federal government, aiming at to professionalize the rendering of public services still more, created, through the Ministry of the Education and the Secretariat of Education in the distance. Such course, in Santa Catarina, is offered by the Federal University of Santa Catarina, that takes care of ten polar regions of education distributed by the State. The public-target of this project is the employees of the Bank of Brazil, servers of the UFSC and excessively public officers in the federal, state and municipal spheres. The present article aims at to analyze the social impact caused by the EAD, in relation to the course offered for the UFSC. The used methodology, is characterized as study descriptive, predominantly qualitative, documentary and bibliographical. It was observed that, with the new technologies of information and communication, it is possible to carry through lessons in real time and with unquestioned quality. Amongst the medias used in the course they are the videoconferência, the video-lesson and the didactic material printed matter. The project counts on a system of accompaniment to the student during twelve hours per day. This makes possible the access of 600 pupils, in Santa Catarina, to superior education in the first semester of 2006. The EAD is the form capable to conciliate the necessity of the education continued with the bigger lack of time and difficulties each time of a professional to be physically present in a classroom.

The communication, seen as influential element of the educational system quality, must be object of relevance in this process, therefore, by not possessing a proper logic, the information are generally not perceived and recognized in the same way by all the people. The communications is the mechanism capable to facilitate the learning, the way as it is used can influence in the perception of the quality and the reach of the strategical objectives of an activity of professional formation. Currently, the companies have offered formation courses in such a way actually, and long-distance modality.In both forms, the communication if makes necessary to learning occurs. However, it is perceived that the challenge becomes in the distance bigger in the way, a time that in Brazil, offers courses of formation in this modality still is insufficient, fact this that presents different situation in the remain of the world. According to UNESCO (1997) the open and the long-distance learning constitutes the segments of education and training that comes taking the most force and growing quickly in all the world. It has being conceived in developing countries as an important instrument to reach young and adults whose necessities of learning for financial, geographic or another reasons, had not been satisfactorily answered by the conventional system of education and training. Considering the relevance of the communication processes in the long-distance education, the Graduation Course in Administration offered by the Department of Sciences of the Administration of the Federal University of Santa Catarina is presented as object of study. In order to search the solution for the communication problems of this course, it is had as problem: How to structuralize the communication process among the agents of the long-distance graduation course in Administration of the Sciences of the Administration Department of UFSC? About the methodology it is characterized as: descriptive, research-action, documentary, bibliographical. It is noticed that the informal communication is a problem, what ends generating difficulties in the accomplishment of some activities because, some information is lost for not being registered. The lack of standardization of the tutors’ communication with the pupils, interfere in the quality of the given services, therefore such communications depends on the criterion of the personality and the position that each tutor adopts.The adoption of a virtual environment for the agents of the course (coordinating, tutorial supervisors and tutors) would be a viable alternative to cure such deficiency, in this environment could be disposed information of administrative and pedagogical matrix, as, for example, the procedures for validation of disciplines. Beyond these data, this environment also could facilitate the communication among the three turns of guardianship, today, this communication is practically null, the tutors have only contact with the other tutors who work in the same turn. It is concluded that the organization must manage its information strategically, supplying the adjusted information to the correct people at the accurate moment, so that thus it can supply subsity to the processes of decision’s taking and course’s planning.

Planned product innovation is the systematic pursuit of technological opportunities for establishing new products or improving existing ones. In planned product innovation, it is important to consider the potential for change of each technology within the product, as well as each technology change’s corresponding risk potential. This paper presents a qualitative assessment of the risks associated with technology change potential analysis. Using the Planned Product Innovation Methodology (PPIM), a technology’s potential for change in performance level, principle of operation, and technology architecture can be identified. An associated qualitative perspective on the corresponding risk for each technology change option at product concept stage will aid designers in developing feasible alternatives early on in the design process. The Planned Product Innovation Risk Assessment method considers three dimensions of risk - envisioning risk, design risk, and execution risk - for each potential technology change option. In this method, risk in each dimension is calculated based on the amounts at stake and uncertainty, using pre-determined factors and guidelines. Assessment of the overall risk for each technology within a product can then be quantified. The method improves designers’ perception of new product development risks by segregating the types of technology changes and providing a comprehensive risk assessment framework for planned innovation. The discussion in this paper pertains only to the engineering risks and does not consider other risks such as consumer acceptance and marketing risks, and competitor risks.

Applying lean principles to new product development (NPD) has become a popular trend for high-technology organizations seeking to reduce costs in NPD within competitive NPD “clockspeed”, where NPD clockspeed is the rate of innovation (Fine, 1998, Carrillo, 2005). This paper is an exploratory study based on theory that demonstrates and confirms how “lean thinking”, prescribed by Womack and Jones (1996) can be applied to the NPD process (lean-to-NPD). We rationalize lean-to-NPD by mapping “key characteristics” that constitute a NPD system (Haque and James-Moore, 2004) across a six-stage NPD process derived from the literature. We evaluate lean-to-NPD through the Stage-Gate (registered trademark) process, pioneered by Cooper (1993, 2006) to explain how cost savings can be achieved in lean-to-NPD. We derive specific propositions for elucidation and assessment of the merits of empirical testing for further research of the parsimonious explanation presented in this study. We confirmed the structuring of data elements by Haque et al when mapping those elements to lean thinking at the value creation process level of our model.

As the strategic importance of customer in the new product development (NPD) is highlighted, systematic approach for collecting customer opinions and implementing it into the improvement of product quality is considered imperative. And among others, web-site can be an efficient and effective vehicle to that end. In spite of its potential utility, however, the use of web-site has been limited to complaint management. To better use its information, this research presents a framework for extracting customer opinions from web-site, transforming them into product specification, and suggesting the best design strategy under the current business environments. For the purpose, the overall research is conducted through five steps. Firstly, customer opinions are collected from web-site and secondly, they are transformed into structured data of customer needs using text-mining. Then, after customers are segmented into several customer groups based on the needs, product specifications to meet the needs in each group are analyzed by conjoint analysis. Lastly, a final target product specification for new product is determined, when current budget constraints and the relationships among customer needs are considered, by applying linear programming. The result is expected to practically help those who are responsible for idea generation for NPD by incorporating customer opinions easily and efficiently with NPD process, which generally has required much time and cost. Additionally, it can provide some meaningful implications on how to design web-site customer center to better collect useful information.

Personalization in products and services has becoming a subject of strong interest from computer and software design industries to consumer electronics industry, as well as pharmaceutical industry (e.g., personalized medicine). The article has made several contributions on the understanding the concepts and practices of product personalization. First, this article discusses the market trend for personalization and develops a working definition of product personalization, as comparing to other concepts of personalization, such as marketing and services. Second, the article identifies and discusses several disruptive attributes that are influential in the process of product personalization. Third, a framework is provided to assist business planners in assessing the potential for product personalization. The view expressed by the authors is consistent to the popular ideas of value innovation and blue ocean strategy that additional revenues can be generated without turning the industry into a brutally competing and less profitable situation.

Companies often run improvement projects in their operations without first analyzing the full range of opportunities to improve and how they relate to each other. This often results in uncoordinated implementations of IT systems and cost savings projects that fail to achieve their results. Instead, companies need to make a complete analysis of all improvement opportunities in their organizations and identify the relationships between them. When this has been done, companies can start to go through with the improvements, project by project. The total “map of operational improvement opportunities” has to be owned and managed by a senior manager in the organization, who also needs to be the coordinator of all operational improvement projects, big and small, within the company. We also suggest a model for categorizing projects and for the sequence in which projects of different categories need to be run, in order to realise the improvement benefits.

The trade press contains stories about technology project failure rate and the impact of the “soft” side of implementation. Researchers have cataloged the causes. The College of Business Administration at the University of South Carolina conducted a study of business process reengineering in 1995 and found that the top five technology implementation problems were people related. Industry research has come to the same conclusion. In 2004, the Chaos Study named "lack of user involvement" as a key reason for project failure. It is vital to invest the time in communicating about upcoming change because otherwise the process becomes adversarial. This principle gets more lip service than actual practice. “Managed change” is both a catch phrase and something of a misnomer. It implies a steady hand at the tiller, but also gives the impression that the change that is envisioned is the change that comes about. However, people have their own agenda. When introducing new technology - or any kind of departure from the present - there are social issues that have a major impact on whether or not a person cooperates with a change. Successful organizational change is a two pronged approach. The key to launching successful change is a model that addresses both the mind and the emotions in a synergistic approach to change leadership. A positive outcome is based on the conviction that the process is as important as the product. This isn’t just an academic exercise. Failed initiatives cost money, affect morale and lead to employee turnover. This paper describes the truths about the cycle of change and people’s reaction to it. Awareness avoids the hemorrhaging of profits and personnel. Ignoring these realities doesn’t make them go away; it merely drives them underground. The willingness of management to share its information and address the concerns of its people is summed up in the principle that No One Succeeds Unless Everyone Succeeds. When consensus reigns, the goal becomes more important than the individuals involved. The key is to find the path that allows all players to realize their objectives and come away feeling as if they have made a contribution and kept their dignity. Some managers believe that focusing on consensus is an expensive proposition. However, one always pays the “people price” – either upfront or at the back end. Getting early buy-in takes longer at the start, but it makes up for the time later when people need no convincing to initiate the adjustments that a change requires. Those who race ahead and make policy and design decisions with insufficient input from users get bogged down during implementation and may not ever recover. The result is disastrous, particularly in the area of Business Process Reengineering. The end of the project is hardly the time to find out that users want changes to the new software. Uninvolved users often find that critical issues have been ignored or misunderstood and they reject or find work-arounds for the new venture. The recommendations in this paper stem from case study research.

A significant group of works and authors presents different methods and criteria for taking sourcing decisions. The Theory of Transactions-Cost-Economics (TCE) appeared as one of the main approaches to base each sourcing decision. However, decisions based on cost transactions not taking in account the service system perspective may lead to not intuitive results. The Theory of Constraints proposes a whole system analysis since it considers that cost reductions reflect systemically only when improvements are made in the constraint of the system. This paper presents the contributions of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) for taking sourcing decisions and its implications for TCE. The TOC approach reflects not only on sourcing decisions but also on managing and continually improving the whole service provision. Our approach consists on reviewing and analyzing TCE and TOC in what refers to implications for sourcing operations and presenting simulation using the two different approaches for taking a decision. After that the results are discussed for illustrating the TOC implications. The analysis shows that better sourcing decisions can be achieved through the synergetic application of Theory of Constraints and Theory of Transactions-Cost-Economics.

Following the wave of quality improvement in the industry, a number of authors and organizations have proposed different “models of maturity” that aim at more clearly identifying the organizational competences associated with best practices. These maturity models concern different areas of activity; however, the majority of them target practices related to project management, product development, or research and development. More recently, working in collaborative and dispersed settings has become common for project teams, especially for those active in multinational companies or in international contexts. In this context, the concept of “collaborative maturity” has been proposed by various authors in order to identify and measure the competence of a firm working in such settings. These authors intend to formalize a certain approach to learning for firms involved in various types of collaboration that are eager to improve their performance within the context of projects carried out with other companies. Despite the increasing importance of these studies, few models have been developed on the basis of a formal empirical approach. Furthermore, it is important to recognize that the research on collaborative maturity models (CoMM) is relatively young and suffers from a lack of empirical support for the determination of the key competences which contribute to projects’ success. The work started by the various authors in the field (researchers and consultants) now needs to be continued in order to examine the validity of these approaches. So, the objective of this presentation is to present and critique the emerging models of maturity in the field of inter-organizational collaboration. For this purpose, for a better understanding of collaborative maturity and how it is measured, a thorough literature review is conducted and an extension of existing research is proposed. Indeed, in our study, we define firstly the concept of collaborative maturity in order to better circumscribe its meaning. Thereafter, a justification of the development and adoption of CoMM is provided for a better understanding of the current “infatuation” in these models. Finally, after a review of the existing models, we present a critical frame that will serve as the theoretical background for future empirical research. The results of our study should be a useful step for project managers and academicians to identify and measure the maturity of competences to collaborate in dispersed contexts.

In the service economy, services play a fundamental role just for their ability in supporting and improving transversally the other sectors. A particular kind of transversal sector, not as popular and known as ICT, but in the same way very knowledge-based and strongly effective in improving the performance of many other sector (both traditional and even more in new technological areas), is that of Metrology. The quality and precision of measurements, not only in legal metrology, but especially in new areas as biotechnology, nanotechnology, energy, chemistry, health, environment, etc., have become of extreme relevance and request high levels of R&D and, consequently, of technology foresight, to understand promptly the future measurement needs coming from the different scientific fields. This paper presents and discusses some results of a survey carried on in Europe to examine the state of the art of the processes of technology foresight in the metrological field in the different Countries. This survey is part and one of the basic tasks of the European project “iMERA (implementing the Metrology European Research Area)”. The iMERA project has the main purpose to enable the national Governments to increase the national and European impact of their research investments in metrology, specifically through a wider and deeper R&D cooperation among the Countries and the implementation of a common European metrology foresight, with the final goal of better serving all the other sectors. The specific results of the survey, the main characteristics of the foresight processes, the stakeholders and the other sectors involved, the impact on their users’ performance, their impact on NMIs (National Metrology Institutes) planning, the methodologies used and other details have been discussed in the paper. A particular focus has been done on the impact of these Foresight activities on the process of prioritization and planning in Metrology R&D carried on in the European Countries involved in the survey, considering the specific knowledge-based nature of this transversal sector. From this analysis many reported studies resulted to have the characteristics of Forecasting and Strategic Planning rather than of Foresight exercises; they reveal the need to improve the knowledge and impact of foresight processes on R&D programmes and the need, belonging to a service sector, to increase the relationship with their stakeholders and users, in order to better understand their measurements needs.

In the contemporary entertainment industry the MP3 format has become increasingly important medium for audio storing, sharing and delivery. MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) got its name initially in the 1995 and in 1998 first headphone stereos that used solid-state flash memory were introduced. Since then the format has become hugely popular also because of the enabling technology evolution in the PC, Internet connection and related music devices markets. As a result of increasing capability to share and store audio files numerous music sharing services appeared and also portable devices bloomed as the capabilities associated with delivering MP3 files improved. In the contemporary technology environment the MP3 players are integrated, for example, in mobile phones and most music players are compatible with the MP3 standard. In the managerial business environment Gartner’s Hype Cycle has gained huge popularity in the last decade. The Hype Cycle represents the level of maturity of a technology and Gartner has divided the cycle into 5 phases according to the state of maturity of the technology, measured with visibility (Gartner, 2006). The five phases dividing the maturity are Technology Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment, and Plateau of Productivity. The shape of the Hype Cycle is described as an initial peak in visibility and a trough that follows before a climb to reach a plateau. Despite its popularity, the hype cycle has mostly remained a practicing community tool and its verification or relation to theoretical frameworks is to a large extent missing in current literature. We carry out a bibliometric study on the existence of the Hype Cycle in terms of technology life cycle indicators (following Martino, 2003; following Watts & Porter, 1997). The technology life cycle indicators are widely recognized in current literature (e.g. Daim et al., 2006; e.g. Martino, 2003). Specifically, we study the existence of hype cycle in the later phases of technology evolution, namely in development, and application, and social impacts phases. The bibliometrical study was done using the Lexis-Nexis database of print media. We studied the monthly number of articles discussing the MP3 technology, representing visibility measure, in both professional press (development and application phase of technology evolution) and popular business press (development and social impact phases of technology evolution). The study covered two nationally important print media sources in the USA, UK and Germany between 1995 and 2006. In general our results support the existence of hype cycle type of dynamics in the visibility of technology, both in popular and professional press. In addition, the relative visibility of the professional press is much higher than the relative visibility of the popular press in all national markets. We discuss the results in terms of technology life cycle indicators and also provide discussion on research and managerial implications of our results.

With the advent of the NBIC-technologies (Nano, Bio and Information Technologies, Cognitive Sciences), research on disruptive technology forecasting methods has seen an upsurge of interest. Building on recent progresses in forecasting techniques, our paper presents an integrative framework to disruptive technology forecasting based on technology roadmapping and indicator based forecasting. We discuss our experiences with the approach based on two disruptive technology projects in two firms. Our basic proposition is that technology roadmapping in fields of disruptive technological progress is a process activity which fulfils three principal functions: information analysis, strategic anticipation and decision making. We propose a six step framework to accomplish these functions. Database analysis is combined with expert judgement to provide a state-of-the-art in the technology field under study. Pictures of possible future application contexts are developed together with managers and technology experts. Finally, alternative strategies connecting the status-quo with the possible future application contexts are constructed. The systematic approach of the project was to apply the forecasting framework to two disruptive technology projects in two companies and to modify the framework based on the experiences made. Four major benefits of using the approach can be summarised. The framework helps structuring the disruptive innovation process. Information from different sources can be combined and strategies can be documented to provide the basis for further actions. The imagination of possible future application contexts leads to a shared understanding among technology experts and managers. Participants found the framework useful because strategies were jointly developed, visualized and discussed. The construction of alternative strategies helps decision makers to adapt to the uncertainty inherent in disruptive technology projects. Strategic anticipation and thinking in alternatives was stimulated, especially when critical events were included in the discussion. Finally, additional valuable information was generated. In the context of the first firm, we identified an additional application to be explored. In the second project, new information led to the rejection of potential application contexts previously preferred by the firm. In this way, new information resulted in an adjustment of the company’s development activities.

This paper introduces artificial markets, an emerging form of agent-based social simulation in which simulated consumer agents mimic relevant facets of consumer behavior and communication in realistic geographic and demographic settings. We discuss the potential strengths and weaknesses of this new forecasting technique and explore several promising application areas. In particular, we believe that artificial markets could be combined with traditional marketing surveys and genetic algorithms to breed new product and service opportunities and competitive strategies within actual consumer markets, an approach we call "innovation mining." We illustrate with ongoing research on car sharing services. We identify problems requiring further research and conclude with a long-term research program to evaluate the potential of this new method.

This paper supports a broader research effort into Disaster Tolerant Computing and Communications. The data and findings demonstrate an existing general unreliability of tradition business Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity systems, technologies and initiatives. This document reviews the financial significance of IT systems and business process downtime and observes data that indicates a general lack of business priority and investment in DR and BCP in US businesses. This paper reviews the effects that disasters have on business investment in DR and BCP and provides an analysis of evidence indicating inadequate traditional DR and BCP practices. This paper hypothesizes that traditional Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning are not sufficient to protect businesses and organizations from IT systems and network outages, nor do they enable IT applications and business processes to adequately continue operations throughout the occurrence of a disaster. In actuality, these practices leave organizations and businesses vulnerable to complete organizational failure in the event of a cascading, virtually simultaneous, multiple point of failure event. To address these challenges, a broad, encompassing approach for Disaster Tolerance, not recovery, leveraging systems engineering principles is required, involving strategy, people, processes, technology and testing to ensure IT systems and business continuance. Approaches for potential solution paths for these challenges are reviewed in the conclusions of this document.

Disasters are characterized by a series of dynamic and constant changing events with attributes related to time, geographic place, size, periodicity, circumstances, magnitude, information, knowledge, and people (Kumar, 2000) which heavily influence decision-making processes during disasters. Once the disaster occurs, these attributes place additional demands on the teams involved in the disaster recovery efforts, for example dynamic and evolving conditions, role uncertainty, and the need situational response increases the complexity of decision-making. Furthermore, these attributes may increasingly impair the management capabilities of the EOC participants, which include delegation, communication, decision-making, and inter-agency co-ordination (Paton and Jackson, 2002). In fact, research shows the lack of effective cooperation and coordinated actions through collaboration and information sharing are still critical and open problems all across the disaster management board (Jenkins 2006; Smith and Dowell, 2000). The unstable and changing environmental conditions surrounding in a disaster where almost everything is an exception to the norm, call for an effective and efficient cooperation, collaboration, and coordinated actions through information and knowledge sharing (Kapucu, 2006; Turoff, 2002). Further, a skillful design and use of information communication technologies (ICT) to support knowledge transfer, lessons learned from previous disaster events, and just-in-time training in the what's, when's, why's, and how's of disaster management is critical (Choi and Browner, 2006; Confort et al., 2004; Paton and Jackson, 2002). The motivation behind this study is driven by the need to better understand knowledge sharing processes and activities in the relatively unexplored context of disaster management. This study is based on a review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies of effective knowledge-sharing in disaster management, from the perspective of knowledge management, social networks, and communities of practice.

Disaster management, the focus of Project Ensayo, is becoming an increasingly important topic of research as evidenced by recent events such as hurricanes Katrina and Rita, tsunami, earthquakes, forest fires, floods and severe winter storms, and by civil disturbances, infrastructure failures (power failures, aircraft disasters, industrial accidents) and terrorism events. Disaster management, before, during, and after the event, is dynamic, complex, and ill-defined. Decision-making is often distributed, ad hoc, and made by individuals and institutions that do not normally interact. This paper describes the research activities of Project Ensayo, which seeks to support and enable multiple research projects investigating processes, functions and structures present at Emergency Operations Centers, including situational awareness, knowledge management, inferences from dynamic data, disaster management and mechanisms of command, control, communication and coordination. The researchers will design, develop, deploy and operate a virtual Emergency Operations Center (vEOC) that will enable and support research on dynamic decision-making, decision support and knowledge management in the context of predefined organizational structures to coordinate cross-institutional management of disasters. Ensayo is designed to work flexibly in any combination or mix in two operational dimensions: (1) real vs. virtual actors, and (2) same place vs. different place. The Project Ensayo vEOC design uses the REED architecture and will be implemented using service oriented architecture (SOA) standards, tools and middleware. A virtual EOC will be developed based on an in-depth analysis of one of the most advanced EOCs (Miami-Dade). This infrastructure for computational discovery will enable multiple research projects focused on understanding and improving the practice of disaster management and the complex set of issues enabling the requirements for community continuity. Project Ensayo, the vEOC, will serve the following research objectives: (1) a research-enabling environment and infrastructure - to enable the research of knowledge management and collaboration issues in complex environments, such as those arising when managing disasters; (2) a test-bed for policies, processes, best practices and disaster management technologies-aimed at improving both the effectiveness and efficiency in the management of disasters; and (3) an education and training facility for students, managers, and EOC staff across the world - by providing a pedagogical infrastructure for students on-site (same place) or off-site (different place), collaborating with other physical entities (real actors) or artificial agents (virtual actors).

Simulation in general and training simulators in particular have advanced a great deal over the last several years. Due to high quality animation, fast responding hardware, and cleaver software; the simulators “industry” is flourishing. From simulating the product/ system performance to the use of simulation for games and training, the applications are spreading fast. One of the most promising areas in the simulation use is in the training of the first responders in disastrous events. Be it due to nature, such as hurricanes, or man-made such as accidents or terror events, disaster(s) simulators are ideal tools to train first responders, short of a physical training. In this paper we report on the development and evaluation of Virtual Reality-based simulation to train first responders for the command and control in disaster situations. The simulation scenarios include specifically designed events replicating the situation to be controlled. For maximum “reality”, virtual reality (VR) is used in conjunction with a 3D identical replica of the physical system where the disaster occurs. The trainees use the actual communication system on site to direct rescue teams. Through actual training sessions for first responders in two disastrous events (a crash of an aircraft in an international airport, and a chemical explosion in a US port), an evaluation study was conducted to assess the training effectiveness and to compare between Desktop-based training and Semi virtual reality (VR) based training. In addition to reporting on the VR system technology, the paper reports on the evaluation criteria used in assessing the effectiveness of the training simulated scenarios. Scenario design and its matching to the trainee responsibilities, realism, and System fidelity were found to be the most influential factors in assessing the training value. The study shows that VR is far more superior than desktop. VR exceeded by far in all aspect of training. This was evident by the discussion between the participants in the “After action review” sessions, in addition to the participant’s perception of the training sessions. The study also uncovers a hidden “threat” to the use of VR simulation. While it may be efficient as a training tool for security personnel, it can be also a training device for counter measures that can be used by terror groups. Such, suggests protecting such technology, and take the necessary actions to prevent the technology from being used by the wrong people. The paper details the findings of the study and recommend ways to manage the VR-based training technology in security related issues.

This paper studies operative and multifocused global manufacturing strategies under the dynamic and complex situational business. Companies should typically utilize multifocused manufacturing strategies based on their business strategy in a holistic way, e.g. through RAL concept (Responsiveness, Agility and Leanness, including quality, timing, costs and flexibility dimensions), and to specialize through quality, e.g. by differentiating their product and service technologies for global high dynamic and complex businesses. This research focused on the competitive priorities of the manufacturing strategy and estimating level of competitiveness of industry globally. Competitive priorities are the key decision variables for operations managers and operations researchers. They indicate a strategic emphasis on developing certain manufacturing capabilities that may improve a plant's position in the marketplace. A framework of the content of operations strategy has emerged. The manufacturing strategy in this research is defined by the relative weighting of manufacturing capabilities, including flexibility, cost, delivery, and quality. By utilizing the competitive priorities of the manufacturing strategies, the analytical models have been developed when studying global manufacturing strategies (GMSS) in about 36 case company studies in about 10 countries all over the world. These analytical models are different to innovator (focus to quality), analyzer (focus to flexibility), and defender (focus to costs) types of industries. It has been preliminarily tested and used to find out the competitive level and index of company in particular type of industry locating all over the world. The case studies in different countries were mostly carried out by exchange or other students and research assistants. The informants, from two to twenty in each case company, were typically members of the managing group, mostly experts on quality, production or purchasing. The analytical calculations in proportional (%) and absolute numerical values of competitiveness and comparisons (benchmarking) from different types of companies locating all over the world grant us just now promising but preliminary results that have been proved roughly by the recent global business behaviors. We have to go on by selecting the best analytical models, e.g. by statistical and other tests and comparisons by benchmarking accurate enough, and utilize them in extensive case studies and surveys all over the world.

The study objective is to analyze the impact of some practices for managing external sources of information on the innovative performance of the enterprise. The research can be characterized as quantitative. The data had been collected by questionnaires mailing from enterprises with substantive technological innovation activities. The results signalize a trend toward the increase in the use of external sources of information. The companies search to acquire and to develop technology from a diversity of sources, such as the acquisition of technology from other firms or the in partnership (co-sourcing). The process of management of external sources of information for innovation has, in general, little formalization. In some cases, some degree of formalization is evidenced and, in these, a more explicit integration with the technological strategy can be detected. In general there is clear lack of a strategical perspective for managing external sources of information for the innovation.

Nile University (NU) is an initiative presented by a group of private business and government leaders in Egypt who proposed the establishment of a new hi-tech., not-for-profit and privately-managed university offering a distinguished education in science, technology and management. The vision statement of Nile University is to “Grow Leaders for a Technology-Driven High-growth Economy.” Nile University objectives is to be a world class university that espouses the concepts and philosophies of the Management of Technology. The aims are to : • Establish a world-class graduate institution of higher education and interdisciplinary research • Establish NU as an integrated component of a Technopolis to support capacity building in Egypt • Graduate entrepreneurs and managers of technology for the dynamically changing global environment • Improve competitiveness of Egyptian businesses by promoting applied research, technology start-ups and protection of intellectual property rights • Strengthen university-industry-government collaboration in targeted technology sectors vital to Egypt’s economy • Contribute to the formulation and evolution of the national technology policy and agenda • Create an environment for brain-circulation through mutual cooperation between members of the expatriate community, NU, local and international universities NU promotes interdisciplinary interaction and the integration of technology and business knowledge and focuses on the development and delivery of this knowledge to the market. It has adopted the guidelines established by IAMOT in the design of its gradate programs in MOT. These are offered through a dedicated Graduate School of Management of Technology. The design of this new unique university is presented and the details of its MOT graduate programs are discussed.

Business environments are necessarily focussed to be value-driven and over the recent years research providers have begun to recognise and reflect this. Infrastructures are being incorporated to provide more regular and tangible performance deliverables to industry. A reason that this is only a recent shift is that the traditional systems for “Research” or “R&D” have not provided adequate impetus to fully capture and exploit a key driver for technological advancement - i.e. value creation. This paper highlights the inner workings of a research, development and deployment (RD&DTM) model within AUT University and two multinational manufacturers of light metal automotive components for the OEM industry. Key customer and industry drivers are discussed to establish the context in which this unique and successful model incorporates advanced technological pursuits into corporate, business and product development strategies for proven sustained competitiveness.

This paper discusses an empirical analysis of total quality management (TQM) critical factors using an adaptation of a questionnaire used previously in the USA. Since the context of this analysis was the Libyan approach to TQM implementation, the measuring scale was designed so that it can not only capture the degree of perception and understanding of each critical factor, but also measure the order of criticality of each factor. A total of 18 critical factors in all were found to predominate and these were classified in three separate tiers, thus giving them a structure. The findings were very compatible with those highlighted in the literature and also covered by similar studies. An index of comparative criticality was developed, leading to the proposal of a self-assessment tool, which can be used for a variety of purposes such as self-assessment for developing an improvement plan and also for benchmarking the degree of implementation of each critical factor against the index produced as a standard.

5´s Kaizen is a tool oriented to total quality. It was originated in Japan by Deming more than 40 years ago. Nowadays its practice is very useful to have a business successfully implement any other methodology. 5´s Kaizen is refered to the creation and maintenance of cleaner, better organized, standardized and safer working areas, trying to highlight a “better quality of life” in every operation. 5S Kaizen is a very useful concept in manufacturing and industrial sectors, as well as the service industry. This concept has been applied in various ways and has proven its worth in making businesses more productive and efficient over time.This paper presents the implementation of 5´s in Fender Corporation, Mexico. A manufacturer of musical instruments in Ensenada, Baja California. The implementation was done at the guitar´s cords manufacturing department. This was a challenge for a leaner thinking. The main objective was to achieve a change of culture in this department.

One of the main problems facing any detergent company is the high rate of product losses during production. The improvement projects usually focus on reducing or eliminating these losses. In practice, during process improvement, a list of improvement actions could be presented and expected to reduce product losses. However, resources can sometimes restrict the implementation of all such alternatives. Management and Technology are the two sides of a common coin known as "Business". Managers today are lucky to have many decision making tools that were not available to them in the past with such degree of maturity. Design of Experiments (DOE) is one of these basic tools. This paper presents a new application for the statistical design of experiments to be used for prioritizing improvement alternatives required to reduce the detergent losses during production in case of limited resources. The results of this study can stimulate the application of DOE to reduce product losses in similar manufacturing processes. The methodology can be utilized whenever there are a number of detergent products produced consecutively in the same production line. In the proposed methodology, one way randomized complete ANOVA is used to study the effect of changing detergent product type on the losses during production. Improvement alternatives that are related to the product(s) with the high rate of losses will have the highest priority. A case study in a typical detergent manufacturing company is given with a list of improvement alternatives (six alternatives). This detergent company has high rate of detergent loss during production which exceeds the company strategic target. 5 experimental treatments (different types of detergent products) are used considering the detergent losses each month from each product type as an experimental test unit. ANOVA analysis reveals that changing the product type significantly affect the production losses. This means that some products have rate of losses higher than the others. Thus the company focuses on the alternatives which are related to products with the higher rate of losses. This approach helps the company to choose only two out of six improvement alternatives and still achieve the required strategic target. It assists the company to opt for the best improvement alternatives that will significantly reduce the detergent loss once implemented. Following the implementation of the chosen improvement alternatives, it was found that there is no significant difference between the detergent products with respect to the loss rate and that the company achieves its loss rate strategic target.

The quality selection problem i.e. the economic selection of the optimal initial process mean and the optimal production run for given product specifications is an active research area in quality engineering. This paper presents a process adjustment model which determines the optimum values of initial process mean and production run of a deteriorating process that exhibits a deterministic shift. At a random point in time, the process changes from an in-control state to an out-of-control state as a result of the shift. The previous researchers developed models to solve the similar problem; however, for most of the cases the process was assumed to have a single quality characteristic. A few models assumed that the process has multiple quality characteristics though the quality characteristics are independent. This paper assumes that the process has dependent multiple quality characteristics where the variances of the quality characteristics are constant. A mathematical model is developed aiming to minimise the total production cost. Thus the proposed model helps the management to make economical decisions on process parameters during deterioration. A multivariate quality loss function is used in this model. To illustrate the application of the proposed model, numerical examples and an extensive sensitivity analysis is provided.

This analysis will characterize the informal sector in Jakarta, Indonesia as small-scale units engaged in the production and distribution of goods and services whose primary objective is to generate employment for the participants rather than maximize their profits. Jakarta’s informal sector employs forty-six percent of the total employed urban population and plays an important role in the development of the country. Historically, informal sector growth has been constrained by the inaccessibility of credit. However in recent years, credit programs that focus on micro-enterprise lending have been established and are significantly stimulating informal sector activities. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of micro-enterprise credit as a tool for promoting socio-economic development for informal-sector participants. Its principal findings are that micro-enterprise credit promotes economic development by generating income and employment, increasing borrower assets, and facilitating expansion of micro-business enterprises. Secondly, micro-enterprise credit promotes social development by empowering females in the home and business, benefits to children, and improving borrowers’ personal well being.

Globalisation and drastic changes in technology have made firms face a high level of uncertainty. In order to remain competitive and adaptive to global markets, more and more corporations in various industries have adopted the newer organizational form: network organization (P.E.Drucker ,1988; W.Powell, 1987). Under these circumstances, Policy makers promote companies, specially small and medium companies (SMCs) to form cooperation with other firms, universities and government research institutes. This article is the continuation of the article submitted last year. We have already shown that the emergence of co-operation is a temporal process connecting several identified factors as factors of the co-operation emergence in the literature (Achelhi & al., 2006). In this article, we present the validation of these results in the case of two geographical proximity networks. This validation was initially made thanks to a longitudinal study during two years of two geographical proximity networks near Nancy. Then we sought to widen our study thanks to an investigation of near 16 persons in charge of networks of geographical proximity in France. Currently we are investigating a particular case of cooperation, the cooperation between three universities which aims at managing common Design projects. This cooperation will be considered from a systemic point of view which will enable us to generate a better understanding of the cooperation emergence phases.

Entrepreneurship, understood as a specific knowledge domain, is not characterized by a dominant paradigm. In the economy field, Schumpeter is a great highlight, as theoretical approach (SOUZA, 2005), while, in psychology, McClelland is another author who is highly mentioned. When one considers that there is not ONE psychology, but SEVERAL ones (JAPIASSU, 1975), and that according to history and ethnography, there are several kinds of economy (POLANYI, 1980), one can ask: which economy and which psychology are these? Which are their common basis and which are the diverging ones? Considering the importance of a reflection about the fundaments of a field of research and using as object those to seminal authors, the option was for a metatheoretical study that identified some of its fundaments and rationalities, its conceptions of man as an entrepreneur, its conceptions of science and society, as well as the intersecting and diverging points. In the field of economy, Schumpeter, in his work “The Theory of Economic Development”, characterizes entrepreneurs through innovating action, leadership and the abilities to act quickly and understand through intuition. Entrepreneurs temporarily take over the role of an essential development agent who, by means of innovation, induces economic and social transformation, but does not change the market’s logic. In the psychology field, the object of reflection is McClelland’s work "The Achieving Society (1961)", which characterizes his conception of the entrepreneur being, as well as the attempt to understand development from a psychological theory that is centred on the individual. While searching for an explanation of development in a psychological theory that is centred on the individual, he adopts a science that neutralizes the psychological phenomenon and separates fact from value. This approach is characterized as a personality trace and individual characteristics psychology, with its dichotomised conception: individual vs. society, his or her evolutionist heritage, postures that make legitimate those values of the society in which the individual is, and centring in society assumptions that are based solely on the market. As a result, it is demonstrated that, in spite of the approach differences, both theoreticians share the same instrumental conception of society, marked by a positivity that is characteristic of modernity and of modern science. Finally, with the purpose of laying the grounds for a line of research that starts from other fundaments and rationalities, we indicate an alternative of relation between economy and psychology. Theoretical support was sought in thinkers (RAMOS, 1989; POLANY, 2000) who understand psychology, economy and science as intricate undertakings in their social relations, and our option was for guiding criteria based not only in market values, but also in collective and human values that stem from the context of social life and assure order in production and distribution by means of reciprocity and redistribution principles. It is in this context of social life that the conception of entrepreneurship is an alternative for social change and development. A perspective we hope may overcome the conservativeness that exists in the entrepreneurship field.

Shared services” is an increasingly important initiative being pursued by private corporations as well governments globally in search for improved efficiency and effectiveness, i.e. performance. Shared services models and practices have evolved so quickly over the past decade that there does not exist today a standard definition of the concept. “Shared services” have been described as many and vastly different things, from old fashioned centralisation under a new name, to the collocation into stand-alone service delivery organisations of back-office or non-core support functions removed from the business to which they provide services. Considering that corporate-support functions usually account for up to 40% of total costs, is not difficult to imagine how potential cost savings hidden in support services could refill the competitive engine of most organisations. This potential is even higher for SMEs, considering that SMEs usually have limited compared to large enterprises. Organisations can gain economies of scale and skills by consolidating and centralising repetitive or transaction based activities. However, many organisations have failed to achieve their vision because the implementation was poorly executed. Making the transition to the shared-services organisation will require changes to staff, business process and IT system. Where redundancy is involved, managing the organisation through the change is a significant and often arduous task. For it to occur, both the service providers and the rest of the organisation must undergo behavioural and cultural changes. Companies must foster a new, well-defined framework and mindset that encourages service providers to position shared services as a stand-alone business that can survive through open competition. This paper proposes one such model for implementation of shared services in SMEs.

In this paper, we analyze the impact of mergers of Japanese pharmaceutical firms on appropriability of returns from innovation and technological opportunities, which are the determinants of innovation. With the recent severe competition over the development of new drugs, the number of mergers and acquisitions has increased on a worldwide scale. The number of mergers and acquisitions has increased in the Japanese pharmaceutical industry, as well. A trend such as this creates severe competition in pharmaceutical research and development, so securing the profit from new drugs has become a serious issue for pharmaceutical firms. We conducted a questionnaire survey targeting Japanese pharmaceutical firms. Our survey analysis suggests that mergers have the indirect effect of increasing appropriability. It also suggests that the firms that put emphasis on both internal and external scientific information sources can secure a variety of information sources through mergers. We also conducted interview surveys. We hypothesized that the impact of mergers on appropriability and technological opportunities differs according to the type of merger. Therefore, we classified mergers into two types: mergers with similar domains and mergers with different domains. In the former type, appropriability increases because it increases market share. In the latter type, technological opportunities diversify because it diversifies firm’s research and development resources. We show examples of both types of mergers in the Japanese pharmaceutical industry.

We report and analyze the current situation of industry-university collaboration and technology transfer, as well as models of regional development centering on universities. In the previous paper, we introduced the outline of the development policies and discussed the progress of “Intellectual Cluster Creation Plan” organized by MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology), and we also investigate and analyze the progress of this plan. (This plan fulfills its mission in 2006, and new regional development measure is to be taken from FY 2007.) In the present paper, we analyze in detail about companies’ commitment for a collaborative research, current situation of domestic/international patent applications, IP management, and business promotion in these areas carrying out this plan. Moreover, we investigate the progress of regional development measures with other ministries. Based on this investigation, we review this plan on the basis of the target fields such as information technology and life science as well as regional scale, and finally, “Next-generation Regional Development Plan centering science and technology from universities”.

In this research, we focus on Japanese convenience stores (CVSs) as an example of innovation occurred as the result of the mutual interaction of technical development and society. We examined this issue mainly from the viewpoint of comparison with supermarkets, the potential rival of CVSs. CVSs, which originated in the United States in late 1920s, were first introduced in Japan in early 1970s. Since then they have been expanding their market fairly smoothly and have developed independently from the original style of those in the US. Although there have been a few signs of slowing growth in recent years, CVSs are playing an important role in Japanese modern society, especially in urban areas. On the other hand, supermarkets seem to have a hard time. In 2000, Large-Scale Retail Stores Location Law took effect in Japan, which was considered to be advantageous to supermarkets. However, it turned out that supermarkets have been gradually decreasing their annual sales per store even after the enforcement of the law, while that of CVSs has been relatively stable. In this paper we suggest three possible reasons to explain such facts; 1) comprehensive strategy of CVSs’ store location, 2) self-reform of CVSs by bringing in the novel technology and providing various services, and 3) the customers’ creative use of both CVSs and supermarkets in accordance with their needs and purposes. These three factors have helped CVSs go beyond their initial concept as “the small retailing stores with long business hours” and have let them maintain relatively satisfactory management without being involved in severe price competition. They have become the social infrastructure, and are almost indispensable especially in urban areas of Japan. Such remarkable innovation of CVSs is largely due to the close and active interaction of technical development and society, mediated by the social acceptance of newly developed technology.

In the last few decades much has been written about the cooperation of firms and especially about the alliances as a one form of the cooperation. At the same time most of the firms are becoming increasingly familiar with alliances. However, despite this growing trend in the discussion of alliances there have been surprisingly few studies about the effect of the alliances on the economic profitability of firms. Furthermore, only a few papers have been written about the different phases of the industry and how it relates to the alliances of firms. In this study we will combine the two questions mentioned above. That is, in this paper the objective of the study is to examine the relation of the alliances and the economic profitability of firms. The relation between the phase of the industry and the alliances will be examined as well. To examine these issues, we draw hypotheses based on earlier research on partnerships, especially choice of alliance partners, and explorative and exploitative motives of co-operation. The methodology of the study is quantitative, with linear regression analysis as the main statistical method. Our data consists of the alliances and the financial information of companies operating in two different industries (pulp & paper in mature phase & ICT in new, developing phase) around the world between years 1990-2005. The data is collected from the databases called SDC Platinum and Thomson One Banker. Our descriptive longitudinal analysis indicated a remarkable growth in the alliance activity towards the end of the millennium, but a dramatic decline during the past few years. Our data includes 43 largest ICT companies and 70 pulp and paper firms with a total of 10086 and 297 alliances, respectively. The alliances were categorized by form (equity vs. non-equity), degree of exploration (partners from the same industry vs. different industry, old vs. new partners), purpose (R&D, marketing and sales, manufacturing vs. other), and number of partners. Interestingly, we found the empirical evidence that there are differences between the firms in different phases of industries and their quantity and quality of the alliances. Furthermore, the results of the study showed that the amount and nature of alliances have significant effects on the growth and profitability of the firms in the ICT sector, but the effects are not so straightforward in the pulp and paper industry.

Traditionally transaction cost economics (TCE) has dominated the discussion of organizational boundary selection. Between the two extremes of the governance structures, namely market and hierarchy, there are intermediate “hybrids”, such as joint ventures, strategic alliance and other cooperation modes. TCE has focused on the risk side of using external networks in terms of opportunism and asset specificity leading to hold-up problems and has neglected the benefits related to cooperation. Recent advances of TCE have considered the governance structure choices by taking into account also the benefits arising from the possibilities (i) to use a common knowledge pool through cooperation, (ii) to share the risks of large fixed sunken costs among the partners, and (iii) to utilise market based variation of ideas through high-powered incentives. Hence cooperation can be seen not only a potential cause of risks but also a device to cope with risks originated from e.g. uncertainty in operating environments. This paper considers uncertainty (parametric and radical) as one significant determinant of use and structure of cooperation. In our view, uncertainty is strongly related to evolution of industry: as the industry matures, the radical uncertainty decreases through eliminative selection of competitive technologies. In the early phase of industry development there are many possibilities how the industry can evolve in terms of technological opportunities. The rise of technological standards and dominant designs narrow the variation in range of technologies in use, hence decreasing technological uncertainties. Since different cooperation modes e.g. joint ventures or strategic alliances can be used as means of sharing or reducing risks, we suggest that technological uncertainty has an effect on first, how common cooperation is, and second, what kind cooperation structures are used. In this study we examine the use and structure of cooperation in three industries that are in different phases of development: (i) embryonic (biotechnology), (ii) developing (ICT), and (iii) mature (pulp and paper). Our statistical analysis is based on SDC Platinum database which includes extensive global cooperation data classified by dimensions related to content and form of cooperation.

A Strategic Alliance is a mutually beneficial long-term formal relationship between two or more companies in order to pursue a set of mutually beneficial goals. Strategic alliances are created in pursuit of research and development, technology licensing, marketing, manufacturing and supply chain. Study of why firms enter into alliances and what makes an alliance a success is not new. However, very little is known in terms of the structure of the network of alliances. This paper presents an analysis of the networks of alliances using a sample of alliance agreements in high-tech industries from 1990 to 1999. We show that the alliances for R&D, marketing and licensing agreements exhibits hubs of highly connected nodes and their degree distributions follow a power law. We compare the structure of these networks and explore their similarities and differences.

Knowledge transfer is one of the stellar subjects in alliance management research. Over the past decade, thanks to the knowledge transfer, knowledge access and learning opportunities provided by inter-firm co-operations, strategic alliances have become one of the most useful organizational forms for creating new knowledge in technology, product and market development and management. But all alliances are not alike. Their differences in terms of typology and expected benefits require further consideration in order to recognize the impact of alliance type on management issues. This paper takes a first step ahead in further analyzing the factors affecting knowledge transfer in two general types of alliances: Endogamic and Exogamic. In the first section Endogamic and Exogamic partnerships are presented and their differences and main features examined. Endogamic partnerships are established by allies desiring to build their cooperation upon their similarities while exogamic partnerships are formed by allies who want to found their cooperation upon their differences. Knowledge transfer by interfirm alliances is the main focus of the second section of this paper. In this section, the factors influencing knowledge transfer among partner firms: relative absorptive capacity, knowledge ambiguity, learning intent, knowledge protection, trust and cultural distance among partners are articulated. And finally, in the third section the role and effects of each factor on knowledge transfer are considered in Endogamic alliances and Exogamic alliance.