ICTs in Developing Countries is a collection of conceptual and empirical works on the adoption and impacts of ICT use in developing societies. Bringing together a wide range of disciplines and contributors, it offers a rich examination of digital divide and ICT for development both in terms of contextual information and disciplinary perspectives.

"It stretches no point to suggest that creativity, innovation and risk-taking will decide our future societal prosperity. We cannot spread those values too widely, so having taught engineering faculty in their first book, these authors now aim to boost the spirit across all disciplines. What a great success for all of us if they succeed." - Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., president of Purdue University and former governor of Indiana Despite the relevancy of the entrepreneurial mindset for all career paths, only a small percentage of the higher education student population takes part in entrepreneurially-minded learning opportunities. This gap can be attributed to several factors. From a program perspective, many degrees are already at credit capacity which allows limited room in the existing curriculum to add new courses. From a student perspective, entrepreneurship education is thus positioned as optional and requires extra time (and in some cases tuition) to do so. Finally, from an educator perspective, the majority of faculty members across the university have not been trained in entrepreneurship and may not know where to start. Teaching the Entrepreneurial Mindset Across the University: An Integrative Approach overcomes these challenges by providing higher education faculty with a toolkit, including tips and strategies, to integrate the entrepreneurial mindset into existing courses regardless of discipline. The book is broken into three core parts: Motivation: The importance of the entrepreneurial mindset for all students is established; Design: The Entrepreneurial Mindset Teaching Blueprint is introduced as a tool for integrating entrepreneurially-minded curricular learning experiences within existing courses; Application: Example entrepreneurially-minded curriculum from across the university are provided. By integrating the entrepreneurial mindset across the curriculum, students from all disciplinary backgrounds will be better prepared to enter the workforce, solve complex social issues, and leverage entrepreneurial thinking in their everyday lives. This book is meant for educators who want to make an impact and truly prepare graduates for the real world.

This innovative book focuses on the most important concept underpinning current European Union research policy. It describes the history and concept of the European Research Area (ERA), analyses some of the underlying assumptions, assesses some of its achievements, and takes a brief look at its future. European Science and Technology Policy deals with the notion of the ERA, a coordinated and effective European Research Area, the successful achievement of which is the main objective of EU research policy under the Lisbon Treaty. The book demonstrates that almost ten years after the formal launch of the ERA concept, little top-down progress seems to have been made in terms of achieving better governance of the European research landscape. However, tangible bottom-up progress has been made towards harmonizing research beyond the existing uncoordinated national, intergovernmental and supranational policy schemes. Given the current ongoing ERA debate, this timely publication will be an invaluable tool for technology and innovation policymakers and practitioners in Europe. It will also appeal to scholars and students in the fields of science, technology and innovation.

This book is the first to systematically explore the integrated solutions business model. The path towards the provision of solutions poses a number of challenges for manufacturers in terms of capabilities development and configuration: firms that offer solutions must shift from manufacturing to service capabilities, as they are required to provide services previously carried out by business users. Federica Ceci delves deeply into the nature, dimensions, and dynamics of this new business model, deploying research and analytical techniques from a variety of disciplines including the theory of the firm, operations management, strategic management, and innovation studies. This enlightening book will be warmly welcomed by graduate students, scholars, consultants and practitioners in the fields of business strategy, technology strategy, operations management, management of information systems and technological change.

Why does society allow, or even encourage, private appropriation of inventions? When do patents encourage competition, when do they hamper it? How should society design the compromise between the interest of the inventor and the interest of the users of patented inventions? How should the patent system adapt to new technological areas?
These questions and many more are addressed by the authors in this groundbreaking analysis of the economics behind the European patent system. Beginning with the history and principles of the patent system, the book then examines the economic effects of patenting on innovation and the diffusion of technology and growth. Throughout the book the theory and the reality are discussed alongside real world examples and comparison between the European, USA, and Japanese patent systems.

Technological innovation combined with scientific research has always constituted a driving force of transformation in our societies. At the same time, it is no longer simply possible to transfer technologies from the North to the South; it is also essential to consider technical innovations that are adapted to the social, environmental, cultural and economic conditions of receiving countries, and which can be appropriated by their potential users and as such prove to be real technologies for fostering development.

The first International Scientific Conference on the topic organized by the UNESCO Chair Technologies for Development at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in 2010 focused on its four priority sectors: Technologies for Sustainable Development of Habitat and Cities, ICTs for the Environment, Science and Technology for Disaster Risk Reduction, and Technologies for the Production of Sustainable Energy.

This volume reflects the main outcomes of the conference and provides some significant orientation and success criteria for the effective implementation and use of innovative technologies, their aims, their particular applications in the context of developing countries, their accessibility for users, and their appropriation by producers and stakeholders in the field of development both in the North and South, thus ensuring their sustainability. This kind of scientific cooperation also highlights the added values for northern researchers in sharing their knowledge and know-how, leading to a real win-win partnership.

The authors gathered within this book include representatives from academic and research institutions and other organizations from diverse countries and offer a significant synergy of competences, approaches and disciplines. "

Peter Curwen and Jason Whalley review the strategic operations of, and technological options available to, the 30 most prominent international mobile operators. This review is initially based upon the Asia-Pacific, African, European, Latin American and North American regions before moving on to take a worldwide perspective. The authors place these mobile operators within a wider business context via a broad ten-year appraisal of the companies involved in the entire telecommunications, media and technology (TMT) sector. The issue as to whether there truly is such a thing as a global mobile operator is addressed; the answer, in practice, is negative. Based upon the very latest data available, the underlying premise of the book is that mobile telecommunications is such a fast-moving sector that operators are obliged to alter their international strategies as circumstances unravel without necessarily having a long-term master plan, and hence that opportunism is a hallmark of operators' international strategies. This state-of-the-art overview of the internationalisation of mobile telecommunications will prove essential reading for academics and practitioners with a vested interest in technology, telecommunications and strategic management.

This book will take the reader through a systematic examination of the factors involved in process innovation. It starts with the considerations to be initiated in the boardroom and at group management level and develops into a hands-on guide for middle management and professional engineers directly involved in the innovation of process technology. The book initially puts process innovation in a corporate perspective, providing a framework for the development of a corporate process innovation strategy. Some new methodological tools are also introduced which support the targeting and proper roadmapping of improved process capabilities, and the progression of customer and end-user product demands, into raw-material specifications in a well-managed supply and demand chain.Various aspects of the design of a process innovation organisation are reviewed in a later section. In the context of the development of process technology, this book advocates the importance of delineating and clarifying corporate work processes. Various environments for development work are discussed, from initial test work to pilot-plant testing and the use of demonstration facilities to achieve lean process innovation. The importance of an open collaborative approach is stressed. This includes involving external equipment manufacturers at an early stage as well as collaborative development of customers' use of the products in their production processes, with a view to excellence in future application development.Process innovation will not, however, generate profit or reduce operating costs until the new or improved process technology is operating well in the plant. Best practice for start-up of new process technology and process plants is examined, starting with a fresh outlook on technology transfer in general. This often-neglected area of management of process innovation is, in fact, of an importance equivalent to that of a product launch in the development of new products. The final part of the book closes the circle, discussing how to implement and measure the strategic intent of process innovation. Improving the general performance of corporate process innovation is then covered by going through success factors and key performance indicators, and their aggregation on a corporate level.

The genesis and diffusion of innovation depends upon the density of the cognitive and market relationships among individuals, organisations and institutions at both the micro- and macro-economic level. By addressing the nature of these relationships, which include cooperation, competition and power, this book presents an important and progressive enquiry into the economic and social origins of innovation. The authors in the book stress the importance of cognitive and economic linkages in the assessment and analysis of innovation within the enterprise, within local and national economies and at the international level. They present a series of interesting studies of research labs, enterprises and networks, systems of innovation and innovative milieux to present emerging ideas from different theoretical traditions. They also demonstrate how specific actors, such as the State or certain individual enterprises, are able to determine the process of diffusion, coordination and standardisation of knowledge and technologies. Thus, economic and political power is a key notion that permeates the book. Taking the renewal of technologies and markets as a starting point, the book also clearly shows that military programmes and industries constitute one of the engines of capitalist economies. This book will interest and inform a broad readership of scholars and students working on the economics and management of innovation, the economics of technology policy and business studies.

HPC, Big Data, AI Convergence Towards Exascale provides an updated vision on the most advanced computing, storage, and interconnection technologies, that are at basis of convergence among the HPC, Cloud, Big Data, and artificial intelligence (AI) domains. Through the presentation of the solutions devised within recently founded H2020 European projects, this book provides an insight on challenges faced by integrating such technologies and in achieving performance and energy efficiency targets towards the exascale level. Emphasis is given to innovative ways of provisioning and managing resources, as well as monitoring their usage. Industrial and scientific use cases give to the reader practical examples of the needs for a cross-domain convergence. All the chapters in this book pave the road to new generation of technologies, support their development and, in addition, verify them on real-world problems. The readers will find this book useful because it provides an overview of currently available technologies that fit with the concept of unified Cloud-HPC-Big Data-AI applications and presents examples of their actual use in scientific and industrial applications.

Can new information technologies explain the discontinuities in the history of the West? This innovative book presents evidence of an overall pattern generated by radical changes in media, arguing that the major social revolutions in the West have been preceded by innovations that drastically alter the relative importance of informational scale economies (the impact of production volume on unit cost) and network effects (the gain to each member of a network when a new agent joins). These factors establish the optimal structure of a society by determining whether decision-making is centralized, decentralized or instead distributed across multiple agents. Dudley contends that an innovation that alters the balance between scale economies and network effects initially has a dramatic result, blasting apart existing interpersonal networks; however later, out of the debris, a new society emerges. The latest of these innovations - the integrated circuit - is currently generating a wave of creative destruction that is spilling over into the rest of the world. To understand the rebirth that seems likely to follow, we must examine not the recent past but the Dark Ages of European history and the intervening centuries. With detailed case studies addressing the sources of innovation in information technology, along with a conceptual framework to explain their effects, this book will be of interest to students and teachers of Western economic and social history, as well as to the general reader with an interest in the social impact of innovation.

The convergence of technology-based competitive capabilities among the world's economies has drastically altered the required economic growth strategies in industrialized nations. Based on a variety of corporate and government investment trend data and comparisons among national growth strategies, Gregory Tassey examines how this convergence has created an imperative for new growth models and strategies. In particular, he analyzes the major policy mechanisms for stimulating R&D investment and improving R&D efficiency over technology life cycles, detailing the needed changes. In the 65 years since Joseph Schumpeter's classic characterization of the 'creative destruction' process of industrial technological change, the role of technology in economic growth has grown relentlessly. The author provides the first detailed assessment of underinvestment in R&D and the two major R&D policy response mechanisms - tax policy and direct funding. The policy models and analyses presented are based largely on US economic experience, but the resulting prescriptions are relevant for all existing and emerging technology-based economies. The author's ultimate message is that the industry-centric Schumpeterian model must be expanded to one in which competition among governments is as important as it is within the private sector. This cutting-edge study will be of interest to science and technology policy researchers and analysts, economists focusing on the impacts of technological change, government managers of science and technology programs, and industry managers from high-tech firms.

How is the Internet produced as an infrastructure in post-socialist Lithuania? Migle Bareikyte contributes to the growing field of STS and media studies with a distinct focus on Eastern Europe. She situates the Internet development in Lithuania's telecom industry with the exploration of its labor practices, geopolitical imaginaries, and critical negotiations from a bottom-up perspective. Bareikyte further explores how fieldwork-based research can foster new theorizations of media infrastructures. Finally, she argues for a situated investigation of new places and actors beyond the United States and Western Europe-such as post-socialist regions-in order to explore the diversity of media infrastructures.

This original and timely book presents the most comprehensive, empirically based analysis of clustering dynamics in the high-technology sector across liberal and co-ordinated market economies. By carefully exploring and comparing ICT and biotechnology in the UK and Austria, the authors find evidence that industry innovation characteristics can overcome some of the supposed constraints of such 'varieties of capitalism' and themselves usher in regulatory reforms. They also provide a first examination of the ways in which firms utilize knowledge spillovers in such settings. In addition, the book highlights the practices of 'free-riders' and the excess land rents that they and more collaborative firms endure as 'diseconomies of agglomeration'. Finally, arising from these findings, the authors present a new post-sectoral, post-cluster policy methodology called 'Innovative Platform Policy', which they believe is more attuned to the dynamics of the knowledge economy. This book will be of great interest to academics, especially regional and industrial economists, economic geographers, regional scientists, political scientists and economic sociologists. It will also appeal to students and researchers, as well as government officials in industry, trade and economic development at national and regional levels.

The Asia Pacific has emerged as one of the most dynamic regions in the world, presenting a variety of social and economic experiences and responses to global pressures. In this book twelve country case studies explore the ways in which national science, technology and innovation policies are evolving in response to globalization. The editors argue that the national innovation system (NIS) perspective is driving policy regimes toward new approaches in policy intervention. Underlying the new policy agenda is a concern with reframing the role for science, technology and innovation institutions including higher education and integrating local community, national and global technology objectives. Presenting a broad analysis, the book will be of great interest to policy analysts and practitioners concerned with science, technology and innovation policy. It will also appeal to academic and postgraduate students concerned with innovation and industrial development, as well as scholars and practitioners engaged in regional development and international business in the Asia pacific region.

Will the workplace of the future be overrun by machines and robots? Are the new frontiers of artificial intelligence (AI) on the cusp of dethroning us in efficiency, intelligence and innovative potential? Automation and AI will augment our human world and potential. The winners of the future of work are those that harness the power of machines to their advantage. Human/Machine is the only guide you need to understand the fourth industrial revolution. It sets out a road map to the challenges ahead, but also unlocks the wondrous opportunities that it offers.

Human/Machine explores how we will work symbiotically with machines, detailing how institutions, companies, individuals and education providers will evolve to integrate seamlessly with new technologies. With exclusive case studies, this book offers a glimpse into the future and details how top companies are already thriving on this very special relationship. From gamification in job training to project management teams integrated with bots and predictive technologies that fix problems in the supply chain before they happen, the authors deliver a powerful manifesto for the adoption and celebration of automation and AI. In a much more fluid, skills-based economy, we will all need to prove our worth and future-proof our skills base. This book offers a blueprint to avoid being left behind and unearth the opportunities unique to human-machine partnership ecosystems.

This unique study investigates the path of innovation in the electrical, electronics and communications engineering industries. It presents a holistic, multi-disciplinary analysis of innovation based on case studies of paradigm-changing inventions - spanning two hundred years - which altered the course of the global economy. The stimuli and constraints which control the dynamics of these innovations are pin-pointed in this book and applied to emerging technologies. Roger Cullis tests the analysis using a recent technology which underpins the embryonic information-based economy. He demonstrates that it is possible to use the hierarchical and time dependent nature of the stimuli and constraints he has identified to predict the likely success of a new technological invention. Considering the impact of all factors which contribute to the success of innovations, this unique book will be of great interest to inventors, patent attorneys and intellectual property practitioners and academics. It will also interest licensing executives and venture capitalists, innovation economists and government policymakers.

'This book overturns the old paradigm ideas about natural-resource-based activities. It sheds light on the new opportunities for technological dynamism and catching-up by using science to open novel directions in traditional sectors. It should become a classic in what I expect will be a very important academic debate and a new trend in development policy.' - Carlota Perez, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, Cambridge University and University of Sussex, UK 'This excellent book provides a deep understanding of why and how emerging countries are able to catch-up and enter international markets in an industry that once was considered as traditional, but which has now become a relatively articulated and science-based sectoral system.' - Franco Malerba, KITeS, Bocconi University, Italy 'This excellent book demonstrates better than any other I know the strengths and limits of the concept of a national system of innovation for understanding economic development today. Any careful student of innovation or development will want to read it.' - Charles Sabel, Columbia Law School, US 'In the New World, viticulture and wine production has had to develop with verve and enthusiasm, to be able to survive and to flourish. In countries like Chile and Argentina, the continuing decline of domestic wine consumption has forced technicians and entrepreneurs to conquer the world with innovation and technology, to produce wines of international taste and to attract potential buyers to these markets. This book is a very professional account of these phenomena, which have profoundly changed the marketing of wines in the past 20 years.' - Aurelio Montes, President of Vina Montes, Chile Since the beginning of the 1990s, the supremacy of 'Old World' countries (France and Italy) in the international wine market has been challenged by new players, such as Australia, Argentina, Chile and South Africa, which are recording stunning performances in terms both of export volume and value. This book demonstrates that such a spectacular example of catch-up goes beyond simply copying new technologies; it entails creative adaptation and innovation, and introduces a new growth trajectory in which consistent investments in research and science play a key role. Contributors: K. Anderson, L. Cassi, R.A. Corredoira, L. Cusmano, E. Giuliani, M. Kunc, J. Lorenzten, G.A. McDermott, A. Morrison, R. Rabellotti, S. Tiffin

There is, in general, no doubt regarding the ethical and human behaviour aspects of the research work of any type. The researchers are thought of working for society and are low paid. However, in the practice of science and technology, they should work, first of all, for system designers who need their support in designing, developing and implementing the systems under investigation. Unfortunately, this is not a popular case in the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), where the support of the system and network researchers for the system and network designers, developers and operators is very limited. Considering that, the team of authors of the book (the team) decided to present the design experiences gained during designing, implementing and operating some line of the computer systems and networks in Poland (the country). The country was selected purposefully: Due to the political reasons, various embargos were imposed on the importation of modern equipment and methods of the computer industry, and the team needed very severely good support from the researchers to fulfil the design and development tasks successfully. However, in the ICT domain, which is a relatively new study and, thus, needing the significant support of science in every country, this support was a minute one in practice. In well developed countries, possessing a surplus of hardware and software components, the need for the support was also observed but could be bypassed through using a surplus of supplies or by learning from the design errors. This bypass was much less available in the country in severe economic conditions and the political conditions of the so-called Cold War. The objective of this book is to present the line of the ICT systems and networks under design and operation from the late 1960s and finishing when this book was written, and to present the requirements for the system and the basic support available from this science. The research aspects under consideration were, first of all, the performance evaluation and, for the systems of the 21st century, the robustness evaluation, with the system designers, implementers and operators being the ideal audience.

This book builds on the premise that the effectiveness of national efforts to increase spending on R&D can be approximated by the competitiveness of that economy in international markets. Building on a number of existing 'benchmarking' studies that have to date only ranked countries according either to their R&D indicators, or their performances in innovation, this is the first book to offer a synthesized assessment of the R&D competitiveness of national economies based on both input and output related indicators. Several quantitative methods are used to combine these lists with a wide variety of R&D indicators. The book confirms one of the major premises of the Lisbon Strategy - that Europe is significantly lagging behind its overseas competitors in R&D. Competitiveness in Research and Development includes a unique comparative analysis of R&D and innovation systems of transition and developing economies. It also features a comprehensive and critical survey of international literature on the measurement of R&D and innovation performance. Academics and researchers of innovation and science and industrial economics will find much to interest them in this book as will international organisations, think tanks, and government agencies dealing with R&D and innovation. The book will also appeal to strategists and managers of R&D intensive companies.

The convergence of technology-based competitive capabilities among the world's economies has drastically altered the required economic growth strategies in industrialized nations. Based on a variety of corporate and government investment trend data and comparisons among national growth strategies, Gregory Tassey examines how this convergence has created an imperative for new growth models and strategies. In particular, he analyzes the major policy mechanisms for stimulating R&D investment and improving R&D efficiency over technology life cycles, detailing the needed changes. In the 65 years since Joseph Schumpeter's classic characterization of the 'creative destruction' process of industrial technological change, the role of technology in economic growth has grown relentlessly. The author provides the first detailed assessment of underinvestment in R&D and the two major R&D policy response mechanisms - tax policy and direct funding. The policy models and analyses presented are based largely on US economic experience, but the resulting prescriptions are relevant for all existing and emerging technology-based economies. The author's ultimate message is that the industry-centric Schumpeterian model must be expanded to one in which competition among governments is as important as it is within the private sector. This cutting-edge study will be of interest to science and technology policy researchers and analysts, economists focusing on the impacts of technological change, government managers of science and technology programs, and industry managers from high-tech firms.

There is a long-standing tradition of research that highlights the importance of differences in the organizational and technological capabilities of firms and their effect on economic performance. This book expands on this theme by exploring the role of knowledge and innovation in firm strategy and industrial change. Underlying the volume is the belief that firms have distinctive methods of operation and that these processes have a strong element of continuity. The authors examine the role played by firms in developing, linking and utilizing the knowledge produced in many different social institutions in order to advance their organizational and technological skills. They demonstrate how understanding the manner in which firms enhance their capabilities is essential for recognizing how the economy operates and changes as a whole. To help illuminate the crucial role of knowledge and innovation, the authors use international data and insightful case studies of firms from throughout the world. These include biotechnology in Portugal, oil in Scotland, telephone/internet banking in France and Sweden, and fuel cell development in the US and Europe. This broad-ranging book will be of immense worth to scholars and students in the fields of innovation, R&D management, technology management, organization studies and industrial innovation.

Technological innovation combined with scientific research has always constituted a driving force of transformation in our societies. At the same time, it is no longer simply possible to transfer technologies from the North to the South; it is also essential to consider technical innovations that are adapted to the social, environmental, cultural and economic conditions of receiving countries, and which can be appropriated by their potential users and as such prove to be real technologies for fostering development.

The first International Scientific Conference on the topic organized by the UNESCO Chair Technologies for Development at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in 2010 focused on its four priority sectors: Technologies for Sustainable Development of Habitat and Cities, ICTs for the Environment, Science and Technology for Disaster Risk Reduction, and Technologies for the Production of Sustainable Energy.

This volume reflects the main outcomes of the conference and provides some significant orientation and success criteria for the effective implementation and use of innovative technologies, their aims, their particular applications in the context of developing countries, their accessibility for users, and their appropriation by producers and stakeholders in the field of development both in the North and South, thus ensuring their sustainability. This kind of scientific cooperation also highlights the added values for northern researchers in sharing their knowledge and know-how, leading to a real win-win partnership.

The authors gathered within this book include representatives from academic and research institutions and other organizations from diverse countries and offer a significant synergy of competences, approaches and disciplines. "

This volume, originally published in 1993 is based on extensive research and draws together a selection of detailed global case studies illustrating a variety of issues from Japanese joint ventures to small business development. It considers the scope and scale of collaboration in order to assess the way successful companies have achieved their growth. The book presents a synthesis of business functions and economic analysis and asks what the implications for skills development are; what effect public policy has; how far such ventures can go and what decision making processes are involved.

A growing body of evidence suggests that financial literacy plays an important role in financial well-being, and that differences in financial knowledge acquired early in life can explain a significant part of financial and more general well-being in adult life. Financial technology (FinTech) is revolutionizing the financial services industry at an unrivalled pace. Views differ regarding the impact that FinTech is likely to have on personal financial planning, well-being and societal welfare. In an era of mounting student debt, increased (digital) financial inclusion and threats arising from instances of (online) financial fraud, financial education and enlightened financial advising are appropriate policy interventions that enhance financial and overall well-being. Financial Literacy and Responsible Finance in the FinTech Era: Capabilities and Challenges engages in this important academic and policy agenda by presenting a set of seven chapters emanating from four parallel streams of literature related to financial literacy and responsible finance. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The European Journal of Finance.