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Books > Business & Economics > Business & management > Management of specific areas > Research & development management
This book looks at service innovation, service industries, and innovation performance in services. It seeks a broader explanation and understanding of services, service innovation and its performance, and the future of service innovation in different service industries. In addition, it discusses service domination in the big economies around the world and how that was created and supported by service innovation. The book will be useful for academics interested in service innovation as well as practitioners in the service business.
Strategic Renewal is an original research anthology offering insight into a subject area which, although critical for the sustained success of organizations, has received relatively little attention as distinct from the more general phenomenon of strategic change. Firstly, by providing a summary of the literature, this research anthology helps graduate students and new researchers grasp the current state of affairs in the field. Secondly, this research anthology will help update the knowledge base of the existing researchers in the field. By bringing together various studies, the research anthology determines the core concepts of the field and elucidates the key gaps and future research areas. Through contributions building on the knowledge bases of other disciplines, this research anthology develops an interdisciplinary research agenda, giving the reader an in-depth understanding of the mediating, moderating, and antecedent variables concerning strategic renewal. Strategic Renewal aims to provide a state-of-understanding to the subject, as well as a clear picture of the cross-disciplinary landscape that informs the subject. Thus, this research anthology is essential reading for managers, consultants, and other practitioners, as well as students and scholars of business.
Evidence-Based Decision-Making: How to Leverage Available Data and Avoid Cognitive Biases examines how a wide range of factual evidence, primarily derived from a variety of data available to organizations, can be used to improve the quality of business decision-making, by helping decision makers circumvent the various cognitive biases that adversely impact how we all think. The book is built on the following premise: During the past decade, the new 'data world' emerged, in which the rush to develop competencies around business analytics and data science can be characterized as nothing less than the new commercial arms race. The ever-expanding volume and variety of data are well known, as are the great advances in data processing/analytics, data visualization, and related information production-focused capabilities. Yet, comparatively little effort has been devoted to how the informational products of business analytics and data science are 'consumed' or used in the organizational decision-making processes, as the available evidence shows that only some of that information is used to drive some business decisions some of the time. Evidence-Based Decision-Making details an explicit process describing how the universe of available and applicable evidence, which includes organizational and other data, industry benchmarks, scientific studies, and professional experience, can be assessed, amalgamated, and funneled into an objective driver of key business decisions. Introducing key concepts in relation to data and evidence, and the history of evidence-based management, this new and extremely topical book will be essential reading for researchers and students of data analytics as well as those working in the private and public sectors, and in the voluntary sector.
Product Development Strategy provides a concise theoretical and analytical discussion relating to the theory and practice of strategy, innovation capacity, and entrepreneurial performance. The book discusses an innovative perspective which provides a practical insight into the field of product development strategy.
This book explores intra-team interaction in workplace settings devoted to technological breakthroughs and innovative entrepreneurship. The first set of studies to investigate these economically important institutions through the lens of talk-at-work, this book begins by discussing the ethnomethodological traditions of Conversation Analysis and institutional interaction and linking them to innovation and entrepreneurship. The book offers rich and detailed empirical accounts of teams talking new technologies and new ventures into being. By focusing on the observable language of teams in action, the book reveals the situated practices that teams use to enact their work, including the means by which team members verbally grapple with the uncertainties inherent in doing work in uncharted domains. The book presents important findings about the conversational accomplishment of work and demonstrates the value of examining the practices of teams in action. A valuable contribution to studies of talk-in-interaction, as well as entrepreneurship-as-practice, this book can help to bridge the gap between scholarly investigations and the practical experiences of entrepreneurs. The author closes by considering the ways that practice-based studies of entrepreneurial work can improve issues of diversity and inclusion within the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This book is intended to serve as an invaluable sourcebook for scholars and students interested in innovation, entrepreneurship, and organizations as well as those focused on applied Conversation Analysis. The book's insights are presented in a richly detailed manner while remaining accessible to readers who are new to the methodologies and activity contexts.
This book discusses the growing use and importance of frugal innovation in society. Frugal innovation looks at innovating in a cost-efficient manner by taking into account available resources. This book explains how frugal innovation is different to other types of innovation and how frugal innovation offers a creative solution to issues of sustainability and the circular economy. The book approaches innovation by taking into account the stakeholders and how companies can innovate efficiently in an inclusive manner. It presents successful cases of companies that have innovated frugally, making the book an engaging read for anyone who is interested to learn more.
This book discusses the growing use and importance of frugal innovation in society. Frugal innovation looks at innovating in a cost-efficient manner by taking into account available resources. This book explains how frugal innovation is different to other types of innovation and how frugal innovation offers a creative solution to issues of sustainability and the circular economy. The book approaches innovation by taking into account the stakeholders and how companies can innovate efficiently in an inclusive manner. It presents successful cases of companies that have innovated frugally, making the book an engaging read for anyone who is interested to learn more.
This volume aims to outline the fundamental principles behind leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship and show how the interrelations between them promote business and trade practices in the global economy. Derived from the 2016 International Conference on Leadership, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (ICLIE), this volume showcases original papers presenting current research, discoveries and innovations across disciplines such as business, social sciences, engineering, health sciences and medicine. The pace of globalization is increasing at a rapid rate and is primarily driven by increasing volume of trade, accelerating pace of competition among nations, freer flows of capital and increased level of cooperation among trading partners. Leadership, innovation, and entrepreneurship are key driving forces in enhancing this phenomenon and are among the major catalysts for contemporary businesses trading in the global economy. This conference and the enclosed papers provides a platform in which to disseminate and exchange ideas to promote a better understanding of current issues and solutions to challenges in the globalized economy in relation to the fields of entrepreneurship, business and economics, technology management, and Islamic finance and management. Thus, the theories, research, innovations, methods and practices presented in this book will be of use to researchers, practitioners, student and policy makers across the globe.
Is your organisation in good shape for today's digital world? Has it effectively changed the way it works to keep up with the new connected consumer? Or is it still stuck on the digital business basics, losing relevance and falling behind in the race for customers? Get Fit for Digital Business will help you to assess where you are now, where you need to go and how you can get there. Leaning on two decades of business transformation experience, Rob Laurens describes the difference between just doing digital and being digital. He provides a practical six-step process that any leader can use to accelerate change, seize the opportunities and counter the threats that digital technology brings. This is people-first business transformation for the real world; the way to build core strength, speed and agility throughout your organisation. Free from digital jargon and corporate gobbledegook, it's a complete framework for leaders who don't have time for an MBA in digital business - but who do want to get their teams in great shape to survive and thrive in a digital world. Get Fit for Digital Business will help you to create an enterprise that is not just more productive and profitable, but also happier and healthier - leaving you and your team feeling and performing better in every department.
Identities can potentially serve as powerful elements that both drive, and are shaped by, entrepreneurial actions. Entrepreneurial identity is a complex construct with multidisciplinary roots, and therefore there is scope to more fully enrich our theoretical understanding of identity and identity formation, at both individual and organizational levels, and their relationship to entrepreneurial processes, practices and activities. This book highlights two key features of contemporary research on entrepreneurial identity. First, to see it as a dynamic rather than a (relatively) fixed and unchanging feature, shaped by different life episodes. It is increasingly fluid, multilevel and multidimensional, comprising multiple subidentities rather than a univocal (and unchanging) self. As such, it has a profound effect not only on the way we feel, think and behave, but also on what we aim to achieve. Accordingly, it is vital that its dynamics are better understood, particularly in determining how actors behave in an entrepreneurial context. The book's second focus is on identity work as the process through which entrepreneurial identities are formed and shaped, and the contributors demonstrate how the dynamics of identity formation relate to entrepreneurial outcomes in a range of individual and organizational contexts. This book was originally published as a special issue of Entrepreneurship & Regional Development.
Transformation and Your New EHR offers a robust communication and change leadership approach to support electronic health record (EHR) implementations and transformation journeys. This book highlights the approach and philosophy of communication, change leadership, and systems and process design, giving readers a practical view into the successes and failures that can be experienced throughout the evolution of an EHR implementation.
This book explores the new product development process of firms developing frugal innovation for the base-of-the-pyramid (BOP) markets in developing countries. Frugal innovations are products characterised by an affordable price-point, durability, usability and core functionalities that are highly adapted to BOP consumers' needs. Frugal products have the potential to drive the development progress and living standards of low-income consumers. With an innovation framework developed from worldwide frugal case studies, this book provides detailed insights through two in-depth start-up firms in Indonesia that have successfully launched frugal products for the low-income market. These two start-ups have addressed two major development challenges for not just Indonesia, but also the global BOP market - traditional methods of cooking and access to clean drinking water. A detailed roadmap is developed from insights into the processes and management decisions of these two start-ups and combined with previous studies on frugal products. Providing a detailed roadmap across the different phases and stages of the new product development process when developing frugal products, this book will be insightful to not only innovators but also investors and government agencies supporting their activities.
This book deals with both the understanding of, and the explanation of, knowledge about the causes, processes, and patterns of convergence innovation. It argues that the process of convergence innovation is a continuous disequilibrium between reference technology and its matching technology, adjusting the optimal balance between the functions of the two technologies. Contributors describe how convergence innovation is a learning process that requires both vertical and horizontal convergence, and case studies explore the different types of convergence innovation such as outside-in and inside-out. Convergence innovation has been taking place mainly by applying IT technologies to vast areas of conventional technologies, so that individuals or firms reap the benefits of the convergence between IT and conventional technologies. Such innovations are made possible by convergence, and they ultimately improve the welfare of human beings as companies solve diverse problems and increase employment. Examples in this book include biochemical companies in Indonesia, who were able to increase their market shares in bio-fertilizer and bio-pesticide products through bio-based technological convergence; and textile machinery firms in South Korea who have been survived by achieving convergence innovation on their core competences. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Asian Journal of Technology Innovation.
Being able to make and receive payments is an essential facet of modern life. It is integral to the banking and finance systems, and it touches all global citizens. In some areas, payment systems are rapidly evolving - moving swiftly from paper payment instruments, to electronic, to real-time - but in others, underdeveloped payment systems hold back economic and social development. This book is intended to assist the reader in navigating the payments landscape. The author explores highly topical areas, such as the role of payment systems in enabling commerce to contribute to the development of emerging economies, the evolution of payment systems from paper instruments to computerization, the role of cryptocurrencies, and the slow decline of plastic credit and debit cards owing to alternative forms of payment being introduced. Altogether, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of payment and offers projections for the future, encouraging readers to explore their own predictions, using the framework that the book has provided. It is vital reading for technologists, marketers, executives and investors in the FinTech sector, as well as academics teaching business and technology courses.
2017 marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, a work acknowledged as one of the most insightful books written in the twentieth century. It retains a contemporary quality, and still invites criticisms, new interpretations, and extensions and across disciplines. This book, in addition to re-examining Schumpeter's seminal work and undertaking a twenty-first-century update of its main themes, brings together leading social scientists to provide contemporary amendments, extensions - or eventually refutations - of key elements of Schumpeter's vision and thesis. Issues covered include a new take on creative destruction, the contours of a theory of innovative enterprise, finance and financialisation, a critique of the secular stagnation thesis, Schumpeter's contributions to a theory of the entrepreneurial state, his conception of socialism and its current relevance for understanding the 'China model' as well as a rekindling of his democracy thesis for our times. Bringing together leading international contributors, this book provides fresh perspectives on ideas that continue to be hugely relevant to contemporary social sciences and a guide for understanding the current tensions among capitalism, the state and democracy. These chapters will be of interest to economists, social scientists and anyone with an interest in modern capitalism.
There is a broad and long-standing debate on possible solutions to the regional vulnerabilities of globalisation. In 2014, the European Commission began implementing Smart Specialisation Strategy, a place-based strategy of growth, regional transformation and new industrial policy with collective entrepreneurial discovery processes (EDP) at its core. This volume approaches the mystery of entrepreneurial discovery; that is, how relevant knowledge is created, converted and shared in a process of discovery. These essays bring together scholars from economics, geography, sociology, organisation studies, innovation studies, and complexity theory, offering new approaches to overcome the limitations of place-based development and suggesting improved methods leading to growth.
For over a century, creativity has unfolded as a valuable field of knowledge. Emerging from disciplines like psychology, management and education, the field of creativity is making strides in others including the arts and engineering. Research and education in this field helped it establish an identity as evidenced by a growing number of courses and specialised journals. However, this progress has come with a price. In a domain like management, institutionalisation of creativity in learning, research and practice has left creativity subordinated to concerns with standardisation, employability and economic growth. Values like personal fulfilment, uncertainty, improvement and connectedness which could characterise systemic views on creativity need to be rescued to promote more and inclusive dialogue between creativity stakeholders. The author aims to recover the importance of creativity as a systemic phenomenon and explores how applied systems thinking, or AST, can further support creativity. This demonstrates how creative efforts could be directed to improve quality of life for individuals as well as their environments. The book uses the systems idea as an enquiring device to bring together different actors to promote refl ection and action about creative possibilities. The chapters offer conceptualisations, applications and refl ections of systems ideas to help readers make sense of the field of creativity in academia and elsewhere. Complemented by the author's own personal, conceptual and practical journey, the insights of the book will act as a vital toolkit for management researchers, career-driven students, practitioners and all creators to define and pursue creative ideas and thrive through their journeys to benefit themselves, other people and organisations.
Quantitative consumer research has long been the backbone of consumer psychology producing insights with peerless validity and reliability. This new book addresses a broad range of approaches to consumer psychology research along with developments in quantitative consumer research. Experts in their respective fields offer a perspective into this rapidly changing discipline of quantitative consumer research. The book focuses on new techniques as well as adaptations of traditional approaches and addresses ethics that relate to contemporary research approaches. The text is appropriate for use with university students at all academic levels. Each chapter provides both a theoretical grounding in its topic area and offers applied examples of the use of the approach in consumer settings. Exercises are provided at the end of each chapter to test student learning. Topics covered are quantitative research techniques, measurement theory and psychological scaling, mapping sentences for planning and managing research, using qualitative research to elucidate quantitative research findings, big data and its visualization, extracting insights from online data, modeling the consumer, social media and digital market analysis, connectionist modeling of consumer choice, market sensing and marketing research, preparing data for analysis;, and ethics. The book may be used on its own as a textbook and may also be used as a supplementary text in quantitative research courses.
From a managerial perspective, the biopharmaceutical industry represents a competitive, fast-changing, intellectually-powered, innovation-driven sector. Many management scholars have studied this discontinuous era to make sense of strategic behavior and the cognition of firms and top managers. A past look at the biopharmaceutical industry provides answers to questions that most managers have. For example, what options do you have and what actions do you take when new firms enter your industry? In the 1970s, new biotechnology firms, funded by venture capitalists, appeared in the pharmaceutical industry with new knowledge. Successful pharmaceutical firms decided to collaborate with the new entrants and forge relationships to develop and create new, biotechnology engineered drugs. Thus, the addition of new biotechnology firms ushered in a new business model based on strategic alliances. Strategic alliances have now become an industrial norm called open innovation. The author looks at the historical path of the biopharmaceutical industry, particularly in the United States. While the pharmaceutical industry's main contributions to society are substantial, there are pressing challenges the industry must face, such as an increase in infectious disease outbreaks or the global aging population, which require new types of care, additionally, mental health care and prescription painkiller addiction are persistent issues with economic repercussions to both federal and local governments. This book presents a holistic view of the biopharmaceutical industry, putting it in a historical context. It will best serve those who are eager to learn about this dynamic, fast-evolving industry and who would like to tackle current biopharmaceutical industry issues in the United States and be prepared for future industry challenges.
What goes on in a small firm that lives or dies by its capacity to innovate? How are decisions made on new product development, and how does that feed into the ecological, social and financial sustainability of the firm? This book answers the questions through an in-depth look at a small business that manufactures high-end carpet yarn. Using advanced analytical techniques to interrogate rich qualitative data, the book draws together established theories of decision-making and new product development, coupled with thinking about business sustainability to improve our understanding of this important area of business practice. The book further reinforces the importance and role of organizational learning in organizational decision-making, based on novel analysis of empirically developed qualitative data.
This book offers a new understanding of innovation in the built environment. The ways meaning of innovation is constructed has important implications for policymakers, project managers, academics and students. Through a longitudinal research study into innovation in firms and projects, the book addresses some key themes, challenges and concerns that practitioners face when managing innovation in the built environment. It examines the key drivers for innovation in the construction, engineering and infrastructure firms and projects. In particular, the questions of how and why innovation becomes recognised and sustained over time are explored. Different theoretical perspectives are considered to explain different aspects of innovation. This includes sensemaking, organisational and individual identity, storytelling and narration. The book has practical implications for how organisational activities become labelled as 'innovation' and for what purpose. It shares some lived stories of innovation as mobilised by practising managers. The connectivity between the formal narratives of innovation at the policy level and the lived narratives of innovation articulated by practitioners is explored. Combining the theory with practice, this book presents an insightful view on the implications of innovation in the business world today.
This study is about the macroeconomic effects of positive externalities or industrial spillovers around advanced production. The case explored is the "technology di- dend" around Swedish aircraft industry, and in particular around the aircraft ma- facturer Saab, and the major industrial project of the JAS 39 Gripen multirole combat aircraft. The project is partly an updating of my book (in Swedish) Technology 1 Generator or a National Presige Project from 1995, but extends the analysis in s- eral directions. The study includes a chapter on spillovers from advanced production in an industrially developing economy, South Africa, that has acquired the JAS 39 Gripen for its Air Force. There is also a chapter in which the results for Sweden are discussed in the wider context of advanced public procurement in Europe. The text has been organized such that the main chapters have been written for academic readers. Two supplements include the technical details of data collection, mathematical models, and calculation methods. The first chapter is brief and focused on the results. It has the character of an extended executive summary. The second chapter summarizes the entire story; problems, results, and methods. This project would not have been possible without the generous support of a number of people. First of all great thanks go to all those people with crowded calendars in Swedish industrial firms that have set aside time to respond to my questions. Most of them have been listed at the end of the book.
Originally published in 1995, Beyond Capital Labor is a comprehensive empirical study about how and how much technology and regional contextual factors may influence company production and productivity growth. The book constitutes a conceptually consistent and empirically efficient study and provides a consolidated model and an analytical framework to examine the contributions of technology and regional factors to company production and productivity growth. This work goes beyond the current state and brings many scattered theoretical components together to establish an integrated model.
Technological advance affects almost all areas of human life. Rapid digitization, increased mobility, new biotechnologies, and nanotechnology deeply influence, amongst others, industrial production, entertainment, work, military affairs, and individual life. Besides overwhelmingly positive effects on wealth, comfort, innovation, and development, this also raises questions of unintended effects, of tensions with democracy, of the role of citizens, and of its sustainability facing environmental issues. Tools and procedures are needed to cope with this challenging situation. Technology assessment (TA) has been developed more than fifty years ago to enable science, the economy, and society to harvest the potential of new technology to the maximum extent possible and to deal responsibly with possible adverse effects. It was developed more than 50 years ago in the U.S. Congress and has diversified considerably in the meantime. Parliamentary TA in many European states and at the international level, participatory TA at the local and regional levels worldwide, and TA as part of engineering processes are the most relevant fields today. Technology assessment is a growing field of interdisciplinary research and scientific policy advice. This volume (a) gives an overview of motivations of TA, its history and its current practices, (b) develops a fresh theoretical perspective on TA rooted in social theory and philosophy, and (c) draws conclusions from the theoretical perspective for the further development of TA's practices. It provides the first comprehensive view on the growing field of TA at the international level.
The use of new information and communication technologies both inside the courts and in private online dispute resolution services is quickly changing everyday conflict management. However, the implications of the increasingly disruptive role of technology in dispute resolution remain largely undiscussed. In this book, assistant professor of law and digitalisation Riikka Koulu examines the multifaceted phenomenon of dispute resolution technology, focusing specifically on private enforcement, which modern technology enables on an unforeseen scale. The increase in private enforcement confounds legal structures and challenges the nation-state's monopoly on violence. And, in this respect, the author argues that the technology-driven privatisation of enforcement - from direct enforcement of e-commerce platforms to self-executing smart contracts in the blockchain - brings the ethics of law's coercive nature out into the open. This development constitutes a new, and dangerous, grey area of conflict management, which calls for transparency and public debate on the ethical implications of dispute resolution technology. |
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