This book investigates the powerful role of online intermediaries, which connect companies with their end customers, to facilitate joint product innovation. Especially in the healthcare context, such intermediaries deploy interactive online platforms to foster co-creation between engaged healthcare consumers and innovation-seeking healthcare companies. In three empirical studies, this book outlines the key characteristics of online intermediaries in healthcare, their distinct strategies, and the remaining challenges in the field. Readers will also be introduced to the stages companies go through in adopting such co-created solutions. As such, the work appeals for both its academic scope and practical reach.

This book shows how business process management (BPM), as a management discipline at the intersection of IT and Business, can help organizations to master digital innovations and transformations. At the same time, it discusses how BPM needs to be further developed to successfully act as a driver for innovation in a digital world. In recent decades, BPM has proven extremely successful in managing both continuous and radical improvements in many sectors and business areas. While the digital age brings tremendous new opportunities, it also brings the specific challenge of correctly positioning and scoping BPM in organizations. This book shows how to leverage BPM to drive business innovation in the digital age. It brings together the views of the world's leading experts on BPM and also presents a number of practical cases. It addresses mangers as well as academics who share an interest in digital innovation and business process management. The book covers topics such as BPM and big data, BPM and the Internet of Things, and BPM and social media. While these technological and methodological aspects are key to BPM, process experts are also aware that further nontechnical organizational capabilities are required for successful innovation. The ideas presented in this book have helped us a lot while implementing process innovations in our global Logistics Service Center. Joachim Gantner, Director IT Services, Swarovski AG Managing Processes - everyone talks about it, very few really know how to make it work in today's agile and competitive world. It is good to see so many leading experts taking on the challenge in this book. Cornelius Clauser, Chief Process Officer, SAP SE This book provides worthwhile readings on new developments in advanced process analytics and process modelling including practical applications - food for thought how to succeed in the digital age. Ralf Diekmann, Head of Business Excellence, Hilti AG This book is as an important step towards process innovation systems. I very much like to congratulate the editors and authors for presenting such an impressive scope of ideas for how to address the challenging, but very rewarding marriage of BPM and innovation. Professor Michael Rosemann, Queensland University of Technology

If you can change the way you think, you can change the world. That's the theme of Now You're Thinking! as it tells the story of how a 2-year old Iraqi girl's life was saved through determination, courage, and critical thinking. The book begins with the heroic story of how a Marine battalion beat the odds to save this little girl, and ends with a model of critical thinking that will help you STOP and THINK to recognize your emotions, evaluate arguments, and draw conclusions to make better life decisions. This book also provides the opportunity for you to take the My Thinking Styles assessment for free to learn your natural thinking preferences, strengths, and biases. This short read will give you a real-life example of great thinking plus tons of resources to guide your further interest in effective thinking.

Rapid Product Development is a spectrum of integrated actlYllles from initial requirements through research & development, design, simulation, modeling, analysis, prototyping, testing, production, deployment, training, maintenance, repair, disposal and recycling, along with many other intermediate and supporting elements such as quality, reliability, information integration and supporting infrastructures. This term distinguishes leading edge manufacturing technologies, processes, information systems and management practices from their more conventional predecessors in traditional manufacturing systems. The increased speed and flexibility of the new rapid product development processes correspond to greatly reduced time to market for new products, by changing the basic nature of product realization. It is therefore necessary to take account of aspects such as technology integration, cost, quality and time management, team work and business process organization and the supporting functions of data processing, to guarantee the rapid development of innovative products. Key technologies for Rapid Product Development include such topics as Rapid Prototyping, New Generative Manufacturing Methods, Design and Information Management, Virtual Prototyping and Reverse Engineering. This book is a collection of relevant papers which are related with these topics. It contains invited papers for technical trends of Rapid Product Development, and it also serves as a basis for further advanced researches.

The book presents the proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on 5G for Ubiquitous Connectivity (5GU 2018), which took place on December 4-5, 2018 in Nanjing, People's Republic of China. The aim of this conference is to bring together researchers and developers as well as regulators and policy makers to present their latest views on 5G, including new networking, new wireless communications, resource control & management, future access techniques, new emerging applications, and latest findings in key research activities on 5G. The book is applicable to researchers, academics, students, and professionals. Features practical, tested applications in 5G for ubiquitous connectivity; Includes discussion of 5G for ubiquitous connectivity in relation to wireless communications, resource control & management, and future access techniques; Applicable to researchers, academics, students, and professionals.

This book explores the character and contours of the Asian Space Powers. At present, Asian states like China, Japan and India are found investing in space technologies with analogous social and scientific and probably with divergent military intents. Other Asian states like Israel, South Korea and Malaysia are also making investments in the space arena. States like Iran and North Korea are faulted for using space launches as a demonstrative tool to achieve strategic objectives. This work examines this entire maze of activities to unearth where these states are making these investments to accomplish their state-specific goal or are they also trying to surpass each other by engaging in competition. Explaining why and how these states are making investments towards achieving their socio-economic and strategic mandate this book infers that the possibility of Asian Space Race exists but is presently fairly diminutive.

The current marketplace is undergoing an accelerated pace of change that challenges corporations to innovate new techniques to respond rapidly to an ever-changing environment. At the center of this changing environment is a new generation of empowered buyers (customers) equipped with fast evolving technologies that allow them to buy from markets scattered across the globe. Empowering the customers has deprived organizations of what was once their right-to introduce new products slowly, at their own leisure. Organizations used to introduce new products every few years, and, for the most part, products offered limited functionalities and features. A low-priced quality product-irrespective of customer satisfaction-was a guaranteed ticket for success. New global economies and global markets changed business practices and focused on the customer as the major player in the economy. Organizations now fail or succeed based upon their ability to respond quickly to changing customer demands and to utilize new technological innovations. In such an environment, the advantage goes to the firm that can offer greater varieties of new products with higher performance and greater overall appeal. In order to compete in this fast-paced global market, organizations need to produce products that can be easily configured to offer distinctive capabilities compared to the competition. Furthermore, organizations need to develop new methods and techniques to react rapidly to required changes in products and market trends and to shorten the product development cycle, which will enable them to gain more economic competitiveness."

In this book, leading authors in the field discuss the habitats of tomorrow. These habitats will be connected through autonomous and assistive systems, turning habitats into health resorts. This book discusses how assistance technologies enable a smooth transition from comfortable health support to medical or nursing care. The contributions have been chosen and invited at the 9th AAL congress, Frankfurt.

This book opens the "black box" of software sourcing by explaining how dynamic software alignment is established and how it impacts business performance outcomes. By investigating how software-sourcing modes are related to value generation in the post-implementation phase, it shows researchers and managers the impact logic of on-demand, on-premises, and in-house software on dynamic fit and process-level performance outcomes in a client organization. It describes dynamic IT alignment as the key to success in a fast-moving digital world with software-as-a-service on the rise and highlights the fact that today companies can choose between developing software in-house (make) or sourcing packaged systems in an on-premises (buy) or an on-demand (lease) mode. This book is the first to explicitly compare these sourcing arrangements with each other in terms of alignment and business performance.

This non-technical, comprehensive introduction to innovation and technology transfer shows how todays businesses need to innovate to be successful. Using a wide range of practical and international examples, the authors describe and evaluate the whole innovation process as it would affect a company or organization implementing a new product or service, from the initial identification of needs and opportunities, through the location and assessment of the technologies available, to the business and management aspects such as finance, marketing and intellectual property. This work is intended for owners and managers in engineering companies, training and technical staff in manufacturing companies and research organizations, R&D engineers, industrial liaison staff in universities and colleges, and students.

This book addresses three big economic challenges from a dynamic perspective: European integration, economic growth, and global climate change. In the light of the recent crises of the European Union (EU), the first part of the book deals with challenges to the real, monetary and fiscal integration of the EU and required institutional adjustments. The second part of the book addresses fundamental challenges of advanced market economies like economic growth and changes of technologies. The final part focuses on the global challenge of climate change from an economic perspective and discusses policy strategies for a successful mitigation of climate change.

Improvements in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have brought about a sea change in the ways in which most people in the industrialized world work. In many organizations the ability to "work remotely" or "telecommute" has helped productivity improve. However, many of the benefits promised by the onset of "mobile working" have failed to materialize. This book explains the technology and strategic issues surrounding mobile working and presents a clear analysis of how this process can be managed.

Combining a better understanding of the state of the art in e-business technologies with a focus on how organizations can effectively provide information support for mobile working, this book will also investigate the relationship between human and organizational factors and success in mobile working.

With detailed case studies from a range of countries, this book will be useful reading on a range of courses at Masters and MBA level, including e-business, mobile technologies, operations management, technology management and change management.

Generational Use of New Media examines and contrasts how younger and older people, representing different generations, engage with the new media that they increasingly encounter in everyday life. Exploring the various assumptions about the degrees to which younger and older people are more or less willing to use, or are capable of using, new media, the social circumstances under which they do so and the very design of those media, this book critically examines the gap that is assumed to exist between younger users of new media and older non-users. Thematically organised and offering comparative analyses of the generational use of new media and technology, this timely volume presents the latest research and rich new empirical material gathered in the EU, USA and Hong Kong, to reflect on societal practices and the practical implications of building a more inclusive information society.

With collective behaviors playing a fundamental role in many scientific and technical disciplines, the book, after an overview on the background to systemics, introduces the concept of COLLECTIVE BEING as a Multiple System established by processes of emergence and self-organization of the same agents simultaneously or dynamically interacting in different ways. The general principles underlying this approach are grounded on the theoretical role of the observer. This extended view allows to model in a more suitable way complex systems, such as in physics, biology and economics. The Dynamical Usage of Models (DYSAM) is the related modelling methodology. This innovating approach is applied to artificial and natural systems equipped with cognitive systems, such as autonomous robots and social systems. The authors discuss in two different chapters both traditional (i.e. based on dynamical systems and dissipative structures) and non-traditional (i.e. based on theory of phase transitions, Synergetics and connectionistic models) models of emergence. The book also introduces an innovative methodology for detecting the establishment of processes of emergence based on changes of ergodicity.

After a theoretical introduction of the concepts, the authors discuss the application to social systems and cognitive systems. Applications to social systems deal with issues such as representing and distinguishing growth and development, sustainable development, ethics and its crucial role to induce and maintain emergence of social systems, virtual systems, knowledge management and organizational learning. Applications to cognitive systems deal with approaches going beyond computationalism, theories ofconsciousness and embodied cognition.

Two conclusive appendices on (1) Some systemic properties and (2) Some questions and answers about Systemics, help the reader to have a synthesized view of the book.

This volume addresses the dynamics of sustainable development in the healthcare industry, covering all major aspects, including R&D, manufacturing, regulation, market access, commercialization, and general management. Healthcare markets are evolving under demographic and economic pressures. In mature markets, patients navigate complex systems with limited control on healthcare quality and outcomes, while in developing markets, patients have limited awareness, access, and ability to pay for healthcare. The industry needs to identify which business targets are genuinely attractive for major or new investments. At the same time, development of new products and services must be tackled within the context of environmental sustainability. Rather than focusing on the traditional issues of innovation, cost management, and commercial effectiveness associated with growth, the authors explore such emerging topics as: The mutations of innovation management The need to foster patient-centricity along the entire value chain of the healthcare industry and company-wide Issues related to improving healthcare access and disease management The allocation of educational resources focused on the patient to increase the effectiveness of disease management The preservation of natural resources and the environmental effect of pollution and hazards created by the handling of pharmaceutical products Issues related to the size of medical need and/or market demand The private-public partnerships necessary to address the full spectrum of public health issues, from basic patient access to care to managing global health crises The required organizational and governance evolutions for the healthcare industry to maintain profitability and sustainable growth. Featuring contributions from leading academics and industry insiders with emphasis on environmental, economically, and socially sustainable practices, the authors present a unique, multi-faceted set of perspectives on this vital and rapidly evolving field.

Climate change is a cause for concern both globally and locally. In order for it to be tackled holistically, its governance is an important topic needing scientific and practical consideration. Climate change governance is an emerging area, and one which is closely related to state and public administrative systems and the behaviour of private actors, including the business sector, as well as the civil society and non-governmental organisations. Questions of climate change governance deal both with mitigation and adaptation whilst at the same time trying to devise effective ways of managing the consequences of these measures across the different sectors. Many books have been produced on general matters related to climate change, such as climate modelling, temperature variations, sea level rise, but, to date, very few publications have addressed the political, economic and social elements of climate change and their links with governance. This book will address this gap. Furthermore, a particular feature of this book is that it not only presents different perspectives on climate change governance, but it also introduces theoretical approaches and brings these together with practical examples which show how main principles may be implemented in practice.

Licensing, Selling and Finance in the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Industries is an assessment of the turbulent state of pharmaceutical and biotechnology markets as we enter the second decade of the 21st Century. At the same time, the book offers a cautionary evaluation of the future financing of innovation in terms of what's gone wrong and how to succeed in the future. Martin Austin explores the challenge that the pharmaceutical (and related) industries face in terms of balancing short term, cost containment and expenditure control in areas such as internal research and development; whilst embracing in-licensing and the acquisition of innovative therapies to counteract their impending portfolio weaknesses in the mid to longer term. The first part of the book provides an engaging and convincing perspective on the context in which the industry currently finds itself; the second part is a pragmatic guide to commercialising your intellectual property; including how to recognise and value what you have as well as the new ways of working that you will need to adopt when negotiating, collaborating and contracting in partnership and alliance with others. Commentators have described in great detail the cocktail of commercial, clinical and social issues that threaten to overwhelm the pharmaceutical industry; Martin Austin's book offers a very distinctive perspective on these issues and their solution.

IC2 is a research institute which is active in developing programs in a variety of areas, from possible pricing strategies on the Internet to approaches to aid insurance regulators. This book examines the strategies and applications developed to forward these programs.

What can research contribute in the way of innovative approaches to deal constructively with the burgeoning problems related to juvenile delinquency? How can the Internet and the World Wide Web be used to advance health care? How should the services of the Internet be priced when the US government ceases its support? These are some of the questions addressed in this volume illustrating the impact of IC2.

The book is divided into three sections: the first examines new programs being developed by IC2; the second looks at new methodologies; and the third reviews new science. The research topics covered point to potential ways of bringing research into practical use. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers interested in the improvement of management and social policy issues.

In recent years many multinational enterprises have increased the amount of their R and D performed in dispersed locations overseas. In some cases this aims to provide improved products and processes for host countries and in others to establish internationally integrated programmes of more basic work taping into geographically dispersed sources of scientific expertise. The detailed survey and interview results reported in this volume provide the basis for a detailed discussion of issues relating to both parent company perspectives on such dispersed R and D, and the viewpoints of the overseas "subsidiary" laboratories performing such work. The issues covered include, the nature of the work done in overseas facilities; the specialization of roles in geological R and D; co-ordination practices; sources of ideas implemented in R and D programmes; sources of funding in overseas R and D; attitudes to government policies. Another key concern of the book is to analyse the consequences of the spread of R and D by MNES for the various countries in which they operate.

Business-Driven Research & Development demonstrates how science and technology can be managed in order to meet well defined business directives. The book argues that it should be a fundamental business premise that the primary role of research and development is to fulfil strategic objectives, within a framework of time and cost targets. The book examines the traditional disconnection between research and development and the market place, and presents the means to derive competitive advantage through overcoming it.

Regional disparity is one of the current pressing social issues. Many countries lack basic infrastructures of establishing a new business or industrial cluster. The book argues that existing arguments which have mostly focused on macroscopic view of economy of society or industries may be misguided. The book delivers a refreshing insight from microscopic view of enterprise/business management and how businesses can achieve sustainable development at enterprise level. The book includes case studies of concrete examples to illustrate how a successful model can be put in place to effect sustainable development at enterprise level. The implementation of sustainable development is also a closely connected knowledge management. This knowledge management looks at intangible assets such as tacit knowledge, social capital, ecological resources, art and so forth. It is also tightly related to regional issues. This book bridges the relationship between knowledge management and regional issues from the standpoint of sustainable development and illustrates how they can be integrated to overcome the constraints to grow. The clarity and well-founded research of the book makes it a useful reference for students, researchers and businesses.

Professor Bill Faulkner was the father of tourism research in Australia, having spent 20 years in the field, first within government and then in academe. He was a visionary whose impact on the tourism research field extended well beyond Australia. This work contains a collection of Faulkner's publications grouped thematically under the headings Methods, Events, Destinations and Research Agenda. The sections demonstrate how his thinking evolved over time and influenced the intellectual development of the field itself. An introductory chapter describes Faulkner's life and the contribution that he made to the field of tourism research.

This book offers fresh insights into how companies can engage with, and make use of, the modern metropolis. Based on actor-network theory and the resource-based view of the firm, it demonstrates how the contemporary city can be seen - and used - as a resource for corporate innovation. The main argument is that companies have to build what the author calls "urban innovation networks." After a theory-based outline of such networks, the author demonstrates the extent to which different institutional players - companies such as Audi, Ikea and Siemens, but also arts institutions like the Haus der Kunst in Munich - are already working to create them. The book combines management thinking with urban theory and the sociology of networks to create a unique blend of different views of capitalism and space, offering a new perspective on both the modern metropolis and globally operating companies active within our distinctly urban culture.

Start with What Works helps you to create new growth opportunities using the resources you already have at hand. It sounds obvious but frequently, managers discount the value of their familiar resources, and instead, they look outside for something new. This can demotivate employees and be costly in terms of money and time. It’s often a lot quicker, cheaper and safer to see your existing resources with fresh eyes. This book shows you how to recognise overlooked potential in existing resources, and how to flip the right switches to activate that potential.

Covering nine lessons you can use for a variety of situations, each will feature a case study and a new mindset to adopt. With practical tools and templates, each will trigger fruitful discussions and insights for your organisation. You’ll learn how to apply them to the situations you face, so that you can identify new opportunities, and turn those opportunities into action.

This book presents the integration of new tools, the modification of existing tools, and the combination of different tools and approaches to create new technical resources for assisting the innovation process. It describes the efforts deployed for assisting the transformation of Product-Services Systems and explains the main key success factors or drivers for success of each tool or approach applied to solve an innovation problems. The book presents a set of case studies to illustrate the application of several tools and approaches, mainly in developing countries.