This book presents a collection of interrelated research advances in the field of technological entrepreneurship from the perspective of competition in emerging markets. Featuring contributions by scholars from different fields of interest, it provides a mix of theoretical developments, insights and research methods used to uncover the unexplored aspects of competitiveness in emerging markets in an age characterized by disruptive technologies.

Territorial Development and Action Research examines the role of action research within fields such as territorial development and innovation. Most researchers analyse these fields from the outside, developing a theoretical understanding of what should be done, but not of how to do it. Based on their own experience of territorial development processes from the inside out, James Karlsen and Miren Larrea argue that filling the gap regarding social relations in the innovation process makes it possible for researchers to engage in the processes taking place in the territory, thereby revealing how to make things work. This book will help researchers face the pressure to engage and play a useful role in the development of their host regions. It will help policy makers to continuously learn and redefine policy approaches and bring about collaboration through networks, programs and projects where researchers and practitioners in regional, local and urban development work together to construct territorial development. Readers will acquire a better understanding of micro-territorial development processes and the roles played by individuals and coalitions in endogenous development processes.

The modern consumer is no longer attracted by single-minded, predictable and one-benefit-focused brand promises. The old-fashioned FMCG communication strategies based on television, radio and print with constant repetition have become outdated. From Great to Gone shows that what's needed are 'Lego' strategies, whereby the marketing and communication strategies are built up by many key facets (like building blocks) and delivered to the consumer through a mix of various touch points. Most importantly, you need to leave consumers to put all of that together themselves. There are major internal and external hurdles to transforming FMCGs successfully into FICGs - Fast Innovating Consumer Goods. It requires new brand strategies and flatter, more top-down than bottom-up, decision-making organisations and a 21st-century model for advertising agencies. Externally these companies need a new route to market through transformation of their old retail dependencies. Changes are also required in all communication delivery, reflecting modern consumers' connectivity and unlimited access to information. In the book the authors showcase what the winners of the 21st century have in common that has enabled them to become FICGs. New, unimagined models continue emerge, to which, with the authors' guidance producers and retailers may develop their own sustainable responses.

How are businesses responding to global changes in markets driven by changes in technology? Whatever the industry, the trends are familiar: globalization and the rise of industrial conglomerates, mergers and acquisitions, the networking of businesses and markets, outsourcing and shifts in the distribution of resources and production, all reflected in the emergence of new players, new products and services and new forms of competition. As arguably the first knowledge-based business, book publishing provides an ideal setting for the study of challenge and opportunity. The industry is currently experiencing fierce levels of competition, extreme financial pressures, restructuring and the threat of technology-induced obsolescence. Added to these are the challenges posed by new and potential entrants to the market, the emergence of new products and services, new ways of doing business, including trading in virtual markets, and the vulnerability of traditional business models. The suitability of book publishing as a context for researching the emergence of knowledge-based business becomes all too apparent. Through combining primary research with secondary analysis drawn from the relevant literatures, Books, Bytes and Business is both a readable and informative account of business in the knowledge-based economy.

Behind the steady stream of new products, technologies, systems and services in our modern societies there is prolonged and complicated battle around the role of users. How should designers get to know the users' interests and needs? Who should speak for the users? How may designers collaborate with users and in what ways may users take innovation into their own hands? The New Production of Users offers a rare overview of these issues. It traces the history of designer-user relations from the era of mass production to the present days. Its focus lies in elaborating the currently emerging strategies and approaches to user involvement in business and citizen contexts. It analyses the challenges in the practical collaborations between designers and users, and it investigates a number of cases, where groups of users collectively took charge of innovation. In addition to a number of new case studies, the book provides a thorough account of theories of user involvement as well as and offers further developments to these theories. As a part of this, the book relates to the wide spectrum of fields currently associated with user involvement, such as user-centered design, participatory design, user innovation, open source software, cocreation and peer production. Exploring the nexus between users and designers, between efforts to democratize innovation and to mobilize users for commercial purposes, this multi-disciplinary book will be of great interest to academics, policy makers and practitioners in fields such as Innovation Studies, Innovation Policy, Science and Technology Studies, Cultural Studies, Consumption studies, Marketing, e-commerce, Media Studies as well as Design research.

Recently, rapid technological advances have been influencing the global business operations strategies at companies of all sizes like never before. At the same time, there has been a shift in business cultures due to the rising prevalence of matrix organizations and innovative thinking. This book investigates the role of these factors in shaping the business operations of tomorrow. To address the topic comprehensively, the editors have gathered expert contributions exploring the following dimensions: the business and organizational environment, strategic design, innovativeness and risk management. Discussing aspects ranging from customer selection to understanding regional, national and supranational market dynamics, the contributions will help readers understand both the complexity of and opportunities presented by designing operations.

Arts and Business aims at bringing arts and business scholars together in a dialogue about a number of key topics that today form different understandings in the two disciplines. Arts and business are, many times, positioned as opposites. Where one is providing symbolic and aesthetic immersion, the other is creating goods for a market and markets for a good. They often deal and struggle with the same issues, framing it differently and finding different solutions. This book has the potential of offering both critical theoretical and empirical understanding of these subjects and guiding further exploration and research into this field. Although this dichotomy has a well-documented existence, it is reconstructed through the writing-out of business in art and vice versa. This edited volume distinguishes itself from other writings aimed at closing the gap between art and business, as it does not have a firm standpoint in one of these fields, but treating them as symmetrical and equal. The belief that by giving art and business an equal weight, the editors also create the opportunity to communicate to a wider audience and construct a path forward for art and business to coexist.

What shapes the role of Information and Communication Technologies in our everyday life? Despite the speed with which information and communication technologies such as the PC, mobile telephone and internet have found their way into society, there remains a good deal of debate surrounding their adoption and use. Through empirical studies covering a broad range of everyday life and work settings, this volume provides grounded insights into the social dynamics influencing how ICTs are both shaped and experienced. Specifically, the book examines the contributions of diverse disciplines to our understanding of these processes, the symbolic nature of technologies, the influence of design on the experience of ICTs, the role of users in influencing that design, the social constraints affecting the use of those technologies, and strategies for evaluating the social consequences of ICT innovations.

Investigating the innovation activities of multinational corporations, this book uncovers and examines why the geography of innovation by multinationals is overwhelmingly local, in spite of their global operations in manufacturing and sales through case studies of produce development by three global players: Toyota, Sony, and Canon. The microdynamic approach of the book allows an in-depth investigation of the engineering and technical aspects of innovation making. The book unfolds the complex and constant process of trial and error in innovation and reveals three fundamental natures of innovation making: complexity, interdisciplinarity, and prototyping and testing. In order to manage these three natures of innovation, firms have to plan, ironically, for unplanned situations and to collocate knowledge, people, and resources.

This book provides a first-hand account of business analytics and its implementation, and an account of the brief theoretical framework underpinning each component of business analytics. The themes of the book include (1) learning the contours and boundaries of business analytics which are in scope; (2) understanding the organization design aspects of an analytical organization; (3) providing knowledge on the domain focus of developing business activities for financial impact in functional analysis; and (4) deriving a whole gamut of business use cases in a variety of situations to apply the techniques. The book gives a complete, insightful understanding of developing and implementing analytical solution.

Today, early-stage investors and entrepreneurs find themselves in a dilemma in which they must choose between profit and impact; between traditional, for-profit-only models on the one hand, and multiple-bottom-line structures with a positive social or environmental impact on the other. At a time in which climate change, exponentially growing technologies, social polarization, and looming pandemics are calling into question humanity's priorities, this Report to the Club of Rome and the World Academy of Art and Science dissolves this dilemma by proposing a new investment paradigm, namely Integral Investing.Integral Investing incorporates and transcends the best practices of both traditional venture capital and impact investing. It provides a seamless integration and shows how technological progress need not be our rival, but can instead be our ally in ensuring the prosperous society we all want. Drawing on her own investments and stellar track record since 1995, the author reveals the mechanism of Integral Investing. At the heart of it is a powerful, 360-degree de-risking tool called the Theta Model, which reveals how to make smart investment decisions based on the comprehensive integration of traditional due-diligence criteria, sustainability metrics, and assessments of the founders' and team culture. But it doesn't stop there. In turn, this handbook demonstrates how to use human-centered AI to scale and digitalize the investment process. The goal here is to accelerate the use of exponential tech, capital, and consciousness leadership to transition to a sustainable global society: a process the author refers to as the Investment Turnaround. The 21 principles of Integral Investing, which she defines using Ken Wilber's Integral Theory, lead to her manifesto on how to implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals within Planetary Boundaries by 2050 through early-stage investing and entrepreneurship. Similar to the 15th century, when the Medicis inspired the Renaissance, today humanity is once again at a crucial turning point where pioneering public and private financiers, investors, entrepreneurs, and other committed individuals have the opportunity to leave behind the legacy of a prosperous society. This handbook provides a source of inspiration, and shows how self-actualization, a positive mindset, and a consciousness that is backed by a world-centric desire can become the driving force for solving the global grand challenges.

The World Wide Web is truly astounding. It has changed the way we interact, learn and innovate. It is the largest sociotechnical system humankind has created and is advancing at a pace that leaves most in awe. It is an unavoidable fact that the future of the world is now inextricably linked to the future of the Web. Almost every day it appears to change, to get better and increase its hold on us. For all this we are starting to see underlying stability emerge. The way that Web sites rank in terms of popularity, for example, appears to follow laws with which we are familiar. What is fascinating is that these laws were first discovered, not in fields like computer science or information technology, but in what we regard as more fundamental disciplines like biology, physics and mathematics. Consequently the Web, although synthetic at its surface, seems to be quite 'natural' deeper down, and one of the driving aims of the new field of Web Science is to discover how far down such 'naturalness' goes. If the Web is natural to its core, that raises some fundamental questions. It forces us, for example, to ask if the central properties of the Web might be more elemental than the truths we cling to from our understandings of the physical world. In essence, it demands that we question the very nature of information. Understanding Information and Computation is about such questions and one possible route to potentially mind-blowing answers.

Global corporations initiate, join and maintain socio-technological change and hence, alter the ways in which we organize our lives. Demanding significant investment of resources and time, the development and implementation of new technologies on different levels must take into consideration these subtle processes. As such, it is particularly important that we have a greater insight into the practices of hi-tech corporations, in view of the often inflated promises of and concerns about the destiny of technological breakthroughs, especially those promising sizeable economic outcomes and societal transformation. Elena Simakova undertook a lengthy ethnographic study, working alongside marketing managers in a global IT corporation in their Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) headquarters in the UK. Using the experience gained through a close participation in their everyday corporate rituals and routines, her account challenges common perceptions of how corporations make the world think and act with regard to technologies in particular ways. The book contains an interesting case study on the launch of a radio frequency identification (RFID) based solution. Unravelling the construction of expectations, inclusions and exclusions around emerging technologies, this reflexive account also tackles uneasy practical and methodological questions pertinent to corporate ethnography. This book is an essential read for scholars in science and technology studies, economic sociology, anthropology, as well as management and organizational studies and research policy.

Digital media present opportunities for new types of consumption including desiring, buying, collecting, making, and even selling digital virtual goods. To these activities we can add those taking place in virtual communities of consumption, online shops, brand websites, and online auction houses that together amount to a vast new landscape of consumption. Digital virtual consumption motivates concatenated practices which produce meaningful experience for their users as well as market opportunities to profit from them. Consumers create and maintain elaborate wish lists, engaging with simulations of brands on websites and in videogames, coveting items for use in online games and even spending 'real' money on these, undertaking entrepreneurial activity in virtual worlds, conjuring nostalgia via online auctions, engaging in playful consumption in other new retail formats, writing reviews of products as part of the consumption experience, engaging in online activist activities, and many other emerging behaviors. Analyses of consumption in the digital virtual realm are however limited. This collection brings together experienced researchers from the fields of consumer research, digital games, and virtual worlds to provide conceptual and empirical work that helps us understand these new and significant consumer activities. Online communities negotiate the 'correct' use of goods and offer technical advice, consumers develop new products, individuals create and distribute their own promotional material for their favorite brands, and entrepreneurial consumers marketing and selling their own products online. Here we may see a blurring of consumption and production, or work and leisure activity that requires further thought about what makes it meaningful for individuals. The chapters in this volume take stock of the emergence and likely importance of digital virtual consumption for consumer culture, including a review of both new and existing conceptual and methodological tools as well as a resource of key examples and analyses of practices.

Research on patent valuation has become increasingly important in academic and policy circles in the last few decades. In part, this is the outcome of the wide consensus that innovation is a crucial ingredient for growth at various levels. On the other hand, there has also been an overcoming of growth models unilaterally focused on technological-oriented approaches. This book presents novel and original research on patent value determinants, which are intrinsic or extrinsic to the innovator's business model. Grid Thoma has undertaken a long study on the strategic factors affecting patent valuation, bringing extensive quantitative evidences across various geographical and institutional contexts. Beforehand, the valuation of the patent real options is appraised when the innovator can postpone the additional investment required for the patent's successful exploitation. Then, he analyses what other complemental IP strategies are combined with patenting that in turn directly affect the value of patents. Moreover, the book scrutinizes the so-called 'strategic patenting' hypothesis according to which innovators obtain patents for other reasons beyond gaining IP protection. A second order of strategic factors affecting the value of patents resides at the outset of the invention process. These are constituted by knowledge spillovers, which are typically mediated by the local geographical context where the invention process takes place. The analysis shows that the contribution of knowledge spillovers from business and nonbusiness organizations to the value of the patented R&D constitutes a relevant aspect for an innovator's decision making. This thoughtful, cutting-edge research book is vital reading for researchers, academics, and policy decision makers in the area of in market valuation, management of technology, innovation management, and economic geography.

A fundamental change in the way organisations approach innovation is taking place. It is driven by the simple realisation that not all the smart people work for just one organisation. Few intellectual property books concentrate on external innovation and more particularly on dealing with external inventors and handling their inventions. Harvesting External Innovation begins by examining the broad subject of innovation, stressing the need to understand its forms and phases, ways and means to encourage innovation. It then addresses the growing phenomenon of external innovation. A number of different approaches to engaging with the external innovator community are then considered, together with real life case studies. Harvesting External Innovation discusses in depth how best to handle intellectual property matters, how to actually work with these external inventors and how to handle their inventions, including a suggested process and check list.

Really new products and services are scarce, yet the need for them is huge. That's why Innovation is an important managerial instrument - but many of us struggle with how to approach it. Gijs van Wulfen's Creating Innovative Products and Services is an essential read for anyone involved in new product or service design, brand development, new business development or organizational development because it 'unfuzzies' the front end of innovation with practical tools, effective checklists and an inspiring innovation route map. Gijs van Wulfen explains how to: c Build a committed ideation team, compile a concrete innovation assignment and identify opportunities; c Explore trends, technology and potential customers, then choose the most positive opportunities and customer insights to transfer to the next step - raise ideas; c Develop twelve new promising innovative product or service concepts; c Check the concepts in qualitative research among potential clients and improve them; c Work the best into a tangible mini business case per product idea, and present them for decision making and adoption in the regular stage gate development process. The effective 5-step FORTH method presented in this book, will jump start your product and service innovations. The success of this practical approach is highlighted in a case study of one of the largest insurance companies in The Netherlands: Unive VGZ IZA Trias and is suitable for both business-to-consumer and business-to-business markets. Creating Innovative Products and Services has been written for directors, managers, advisors and innovation specialists in organisations who are responsible for, or involved in, product innovation. In it you will find practical guidance through every stage.

Global Strategy: Competing in the Connected Economy details how firms enter, compete and grow in foreign markets. Jain moves away from the traditional focus on developed countries and their multinational enterprises, instead focusing on both developed and emerging economies, as well as their interaction in an increasingly connected world. As the current global business environment is increasingly shaped-and connected-by faster technological developments, geopolitical forces, emerging economies, and new multinationals from those economies, this highly charged dynamic provides rich opportunity to revisit mainstream paradigms in globalization, innovation, and global strategy. The book rises to the challenge, exploring new competitive phenomena, new business models, and new strategies. Rich illustrations, real-world examples, and case data, provide students and executives with the insights necessary to connect, compete, and grow in a globalized business environment. This bold book succinctly covers strategy models and implementation for a range of global players, providing students of strategy and international business with a rich understanding of the contemporary business environment. For access to additional materials, including Powerpoint slides, a list of suggested cases, and sample syllabus, please contact Vinod Jain ([email protected]).

The track record of IT projects is poor. Less than a third of IT projects deliver what they said they would, on schedule and on budget. The major cause of IT project failure is not, as you might expect, poor IT leadership or difficult technology but poor business leadership. One of the reasons for this is that, unlike their IT peers, business managers often get little training or education in project delivery, let alone the special case represented by an IT project. Business Leadership for IT Projects addresses the gap by providing tools and ideas that are applicable to all sizes of IT projects, from those in large multinational corporations, down to small growing businesses. It sets out the key project touchpoints where business leadership can have a major impact on project success. The book combines psychological research and project best practice to create a practical toolbox that can be dipped into, as needs arise, or followed as an overall approach to IT project leadership. The toolbox weaves together three key strands of thought. First, that the concept of value should be at the forefront of project design and delivery. Second, that business managers need to take active leadership of IT projects to secure value. Third, that project teams need tools to slow down their thinking and ensure that actions and decisions are well thought through.

Communication audit is a relatively new field of research, which has so far been investigated from a managerial point of view. Linguists have not yet researched it. This book summarises existing, mainly managerial, approaches to communication audits and brings to the forefront a linguistic perspective on them. It showcases that their essence is to capture and assess the actual communication behaviour of auditees. The proposed communication audit model, communication audit procedures, and linguistic form sheet can be applied and further developed by scientists interested in taking on research into communication and by practitioners who wish to conduct communication audits in practice.

In this book, leading CEOs, CIOs and experts from international corporations explore the role of digitalization and cloud-based processes as the main business drivers of the 21st century. Focusing on how to get started with digitalization and how to handle the technologies involved, they employ analyses and practical case studies to demonstrate how to unleash the potential offered by the cloud, and how to achieve the most critical success factors - quality and security - through the right partnerships. Readers will discover why the cloud will soon take over the driver's seat in cars, and why Heineken CIO Anne Teague claims that innovation is impossible without high-quality IT. The book reveals what IT managers can learn from Silicon Valley and China today, and why Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges believes Europe's future depends on successful digitalization. In a closing strategic assessment, the editor Ferri Abolhassan presents the cloud as the essential backbone of digitalization. In short, the book provides readers the first comprehensive, high-level assessment of cloud-based digital transformation in the era of Industry 4.0.

For courses in human relations. Show Students How Personal and Career Success Stems from the Development of Improved Human Relations Skills By linking career and personal success to the development of human relations skills, the Eleventh Edition of Human Relations for Career and Personal Success stresses the importance of learning to deal more effectively with others. Applicable to a wide range of courses and professions, the text emphasizes teamwork, influencing others, and motivation as key components of success in work and life. Picking up where the previous edition left off, Dubrin continues to use new and powerful examples and exercises as part of a proven approach to help readers develop better their interpersonal skills.

Addressing the issues unique to managers of creative technical staff, this guide reflects not only Ronald Kay's long experience observing and teaching successful management techniques, but also treats the expanding challenges due to increasingly globally-based projects and staff. As before, Kay's guide helps readers to prepare themselves, graduate students and others to understand and improve their managerial skills and covers such practical, yet sometimes overlooked, steps such as: individual and team behavior of creative technical staff; managing their own and others' R&D projects; hiring, evaluating and compensating technical staff; R&D proposals and administrative functions; and presentations, meetings and organizational culture. New to this edition are a chapter on the global impact of high-tech enterprises and sections on the roles of foundations and government funding and task-force participation. Also tackled are the basics of starting, financing and staffing venture-capital-funded enterprises. What's more, this book also serves to increase the awareness and knowledge base of anyone who needs to meet the challenge of managing people with the creative energies that drive technologically-based economic growth."

The first book to analyze how new technologies are emerging against a background of continuing globalization of research and development activities. This unique book explores how technological communities and networks shape a broad range of new computer based technologies in regional, national and international contexts. Offering a critique of existing organizational and business models, Assimakopoulos analyzes the structure of a broad range of existing technological communities and networks looking at a range of areas including: Internet security electronic copyright intellectual property rights protection geographic information systems. This text is a key resource for research and development managers, ICT engineers and policy makers, as well as post graduate researchers in knowledge management, technology policy, sociology and economics of innovation or history of science and technology.

Behind the steady stream of new products, technologies, systems and services in our modern societies there is prolonged and complicated battle around the role of users. How should designers get to know the users' interests and needs? Who should speak for the users? How may designers collaborate with users and in what ways may users take innovation into their own hands? The New Production of Users offers a rare overview of these issues. It traces the history of designer-user relations from the era of mass production to the present days. Its focus lies in elaborating the currently emerging strategies and approaches to user involvement in business and citizen contexts. It analyses the challenges in the practical collaborations between designers and users, and it investigates a number of cases, where groups of users collectively took charge of innovation. In addition to a number of new case studies, the book provides a thorough account of theories of user involvement as well as and offers further developments to these theories. As a part of this, the book relates to the wide spectrum of fields currently associated with user involvement, such as user-centered design, participatory design, user innovation, open source software, cocreation and peer production. Exploring the nexus between users and designers, between efforts to democratize innovation and to mobilize users for commercial purposes, this multi-disciplinary book will be of great interest to academics, policy makers and practitioners in fields such as Innovation Studies, Innovation Policy, Science and Technology Studies, Cultural Studies, Consumption studies, Marketing, e-commerce, Media Studies as well as Design research.