This monograph provides a methodological approach for establishing demand-oriented levels of energy transparency of factories. The author presents a systematic indication of energy drivers and cost factors, taking into account the interdependencies between facility and production domains. Particular attention is given to energy flow metering and monitoring. Readers will also be provided with an in-depth description of a planning tool which allows for systematically deriving suitable metering points in complex factory environments. The target audience primarily comprises researchers and experts in the field of factory planning, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

Too Good to Fail: Creating Marketplace Value form the World's Brightest Minds is a guide for senior managers seeking to address their need to rapidly develop globally innovative products with constrained R&D budgets. It creates a practical strategy to address and bring together, for the first time, the emergence of open innovation networks, intellectual property, technology transfer and the ubiquitous compression of technology development time lines in a clear, connected and lucid manner. In the industry today, companies look to remain competitive in the face of the convergence of global innovation networks and sub-optimal equity markets. This book offers a new perspective, turning what was once perceived as a weakness into a strength. Drastic action is required to address the inability of companies to control the development of new technology. It requires relinquishing the illusion of control over new technology development and embracing crowdsourcing discoveries from the world's leading research institutions to exogenously replace the "R" of corporate "R&D." The synthesis of the literatures on open innovation and technology transfer should prove useful to the growing number of practitioners in technology transfer. The recent global emergence of Patent Box tax relief has for the first time created the financial incentives for firms to seek to create marketplace value from university intellectual capital, to improve both their competitiveness and after tax income.

The Russian Federation has a history of more than twenty years of transformation to a market economy, but as well to a knowledge society, to look back on. This study takes a look at the knowledge generation, knowledge transmission and knowledge use inside the Federation since the early 1990s. Furthermore, in light of the high dependence of the Russian economy on the oil and gas sectors this study analyzes the impact knowledge related factors have on regional income generation following thereby in the direction of Schumpeterian growth theory. The study combines descriptive with empirical analyses to paint a picture as detailed as possible of the Russian knowledge society and its innovative potential.

Cross-cultural knowledge management, an elusive yet consequential phenomenon, is becoming an increasingly essential factor in organizational practice and policy in the era of globalization. In order to overcome culturally shaped blind spots in conducting research in different settings, this volume highlights how the structuring of roles, interests, and power among different organizational elements, such as teams, departments, and management hierarchies (each comprised of members from different intellectual and professional backgrounds), generates various paradoxes and tensions that bring into play a set of dynamics that have an impact on learning processes. In this context, such questions often arise: How is knowledge shared in the multicultural organization? What problems and issues emerge? How do different mentalities affect people's responses to new knowledge and new ideas? How can knowledge-sharing processes be improved? Under which conditions do ideas generated by units or groups of different cultural traditions have a chance of being heard and implemented? Such questions translate into an investigation of potential managerial dilemmas that occur when different but equally valid choices create tensions in decision making. The authors draw from experiences working with a wide variety of organizations, and insights from such fields as sociology and psychology, to shed new light on the dynamics of knowledge management in the multicultural enterprise. In so doing, they help to identify both obstacles to successful communication and opportunities to inspire creativity and foster collaboration. The authors note that in order to enable organizations to transfer knowledge effectively, mechanisms for dispute settlement, mediation of cultural conflict, and enforcing agreements need to be in place.

Success in solution business starts by accepting that solution" "business is a separate business model, not simply another product category or an extension of the existing product business. This book identifies the business model areas that firms need to focus on when transforming into solution business. It further organizes these areas into three sets of capabilities and practices: commercialization, industrialization and solution platforms. This is the first book to take a comprehensive view of success in solution business and its relevance therefore extends to all functions of firms wanting to become solution providers as well as to many managerial levels. The book will also help you self-assess how ready your organization is for success in solution business.

This book presents readers with the opportunity to fundamentally re-evaluate the processes of innovation and entrepreneurship, and to rethink how they might best be stimulated and fostered within our organizations and communities. The fundamental thesis of the book is that the entrepreneurial process is not a linear progression from novel idea to successful innovation, but is an iterative series of experiments, where progress depends on the persistence and resilience of the individuals involved, and their ability and to learn from failure as well as success. From this premise, the authors argue that the ideal environment for new venture creation is a form of "experimental laboratory," a community of innovators where ideas are generated, shared, and refined; experiments are encouraged; and which in itself serves as a test environment for those ideas and experiments. This environment is quite different from the traditional "incubator," which may impose the disciplines of the established firm too early in the development of the new venture. Featuring case examples of start-ups across a wide spectrum of industries, from Wikipedia to Ryanair, the authors explore the qualities of successful innovation, including a high tolerance of risk and unpredictability and commitment to building knowledge enterprises that value intangible assets. This volume is a clarion call to those in academia, enterprise, and government who seek to work together to promote innovation and entrepreneurship, with a stark message for academic institutions: engage or be left behind.

The book assists in bringing together the three stakeholders of an innovation - inventor, decision maker and organization. These stakeholders have conflicting requirements and the book offers advice on how and by what methods they can communicate and the information that is expected and required in different phases of innovation. The perspectives of inventor, decision maker and organization are integrated in a business model that enables a common "language" and communication platform for the inevitably emerging tension field and that allows for asking and answering the right questions.

This book comprises refereed papers from the 10th World Congress on Engineering Asset Management (WCEAM 2015), held in Tampere, Finland in September 2015. These proceedings include a compilation of state-of-the-art papers covering a comprehensive range of subjects equally relevant to business managers and engineering professionals alike. With a focus on various aspects of engineering asset management ranging from strategic level issues to detail-level machine health issues, these papers address both industry and public sector concerns and issues, as well as advanced academic research. Proceedings of the WCEAM 2015 is an excellent reference and resource for asset management practitioners, researchers and academics, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students at tertiary institutions or in the industry.

There has been much attention paid to the idea of Smart Cities as researchers have sought to define and characterize the main aspects of the concept, including the role of creative industries in urban growth, the importance of social capital in urban development, and the role of urban sustainability. This book develops a critical view of the Smart City concept, the incentives and role of governments in promoting the development of Smart Cities and the analysis of experiences of e-government projects addressed to enhance Smart Cities. This book further analyzes the perceptions of stakeholders, such as public managers or politicians, regarding the incentives and role of governments in Smart Cities and the critical analysis of e-government projects to promote Smart Cities' development, making the book valuable to academics, researchers, policy-makers, public managers, international organizations and technical experts in understanding the role of government to enhance Smart Cities' projects.

Global cities today are facing fundamental challenges in relation to unaffordable housing and growing economic inequality. Singapore's success in making homeownership possible for 90% of its population has attracted much attention internationally. This book represents a culmination of research by the author on key housing policy innovations for affordable housing. Housing policy changes were effected in the 1960s through reforms of colonial legislation and institutions dealing with state land acquisition, public housing, and provident fund savings. The comprehensive housing framework that was established enabled the massive resettlement of households from shophouses, slums and villages to high-rise government-built flats. In the 1980s and 1990s, housing market and land use regulations were amended in response to the changing needs of a growing economy. Housing policies have also been utilised to curb housing speculation, build racially inclusive communities, and reduce wealth inequality. More recently, an ageing population of homeowners has necessitated focus on policies for housing equity extraction. This landmark title is of relevance to all developing economies exploring alternative systems of affordable housing.

One of the first of its kind, this book examines the digitalization of Chinese businesses both theoretically and practically. Taking a fresh and unique approach, the authors seek to adopt individual theories for each empirical case explored and investigate the dramatic digital transformation that Chinese firms have undergone in recent years. With a particular focus on social networks, the authors observe and analyze the way that digitized applications can interlink with financial systems, developing new capabilities that help to yield competitive advantage. Covering both small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and globally orientated multinational enterprises (MNEs), this book is a valuable resource for those researching Asian business, or international business more generally, as well as innovation and technology management.

This guide for aspiring entrepreneurs provides expert advice on every aspect of launching a new business. It is designed to be of particular value for academics wishing to exploit the commercial value of a new technology or business solution. Inspiring and readable, it shows how to evaluate the strength of a business idea, how to protect inventions, reviews legal steps and responsibilities, shows how to position products in the market, how to create a business plan and raise initial capital. Case studies, exercises and tips demystify the process of starting a business, build confidence and greatly increase the chances of success.

Contributing to the debate on work performance evaluation in a time of technological transformation, this book explores the impact of digitisation on production and organisation models, as well as on the rights and interests of the stakeholders involved. As organisations down-size, merge with other companies and become decentralised, the boundaries in employer-employee-customer relationships are blurred and new models for the organisation and assessment of work performance have emerged. With these new models, innovative regulatory approaches are sorely needed. Taking an interdisciplinary approach and drawing on theoretical concepts from organisation studies, human resource management, sociology and labour economics, this all-encompassing collection is not only essential reading for academics and students, but also for policy-makers and employers who are looking for innovative and practical solutions to the challenges of modern employment relations.

This book analyzes the current trends in the production, dissemination, and use of knowledge which contribute to social inequalities, especially in the Global South. The aim of the text is to explore the possibilities of active involvement by universities in the democratization of knowledge - a process by which people will be able to more easily acquire and utilize knowledge, as well as the results and benefits of research and development. Combining higher education, research, and knowledge utilization is what universities should be doing. When they efficiently contribute to overcoming inequality and underdevelopment, they may be considered developmental universities. They should not function in solitude with privileged elites alone, but in the context of "inclusive innovation systems."

The Internet and related technologies have dramatically changed the way we live, work, socialize, and even topple national governments. As the Internet becomes increasingly pervasive across societies, we find more often that governments adopt Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) as part of their toolbox for facilitating efficient and citizen-oriented service delivery at all levels of government. Local governments across the major industrialized democracies have not been an exception to this trend and have set sail into the age of digital government. Closest to their citizens, towns and cities have adopted ICTs to facilitate electronic government (e-government). While research on local e-government functionality in terms of information dissemination, service delivery, and citizen engagement continues at an impressive empirical and methodological pace, gaps in our knowledge remain. Cross-national comparative research on local e-government that covers a wide range of municipalities in combination with in-depth case study analyses is lacking. Informed by a comparative case study approach, this book seeks to narrow that gap and offer practical policy solutions to facilitate local e-government. We do so by pursuing both a macro and micro perspective of e-government functionality in the federal republics of Germany and the United States and unitary France and Japan. The macro perspective focuses on the state and scope of e-government functionality across a large number of randomly selected municipalities of all sizes in these advanced industrialized countries. Based on a small sample of case studies, the micro perspective analyzes the successful implementation of e-government in Seattle (United States), Nuremberg (Germany), Bordeaux (France), and Shizuoka City (Japan).

This book focuses on the specific traits and nature of entrepreneurial human capital and the extent to which it can be stimulated by entrepreneurship education - especially when these activities combine collaborative practices and innovation. It includes a comprehensive collection of articles on how entrepreneurship education can be structured, providing theoretical reflections as well as empirical evidence. As such it contributes to the ongoing debate on the teachability of entrepreneurial skills and the role of innovation and collaboration in the design of educational programs that aim to spread entrepreneurial human capital.

The book explores different approaches towards the 'entrepreneurial university' paradigm, explores channels and mechanism used by universities to implement the paradigm and contributes to the public discussion on the impact of commercialization on university research and knowledge. It argues that different types of university-industry interaction may have repercussions even on funding of basic research if an appropriate balance is ensured between the two. University activities - both research and education in all forms - should provide economic and social relevance directed towards open science and open innovation. This book adds value to current knowledge by presenting both a conceptual framework and case studies which describe different contexts.

This book analyses the relationships among product safety strategy and culture, concurrent engineering, new product development (NPD) processes and product safety performance. Product safety is a matter of enormous economic and societal concern, given the safety risks to consumers and the financial risks to producers. Nevertheless, a thorough conceptual understanding of the effects of NPD policies and practices is still largely missing, as several large-scale trends have made clarifying the role of product safety in its socio-economic context difficult, including: the rise of consumerism and the shift in the balance of power from manufacturers to customers and regulators; the internationalization of value chains and the fragmentation of markets worldwide; and technological change leading to a sophistication of products that rendered average consumers increasingly unaware of risk and potential accidents. This volume sets out to close the gaps among research, practice and policy, with an emphasis on advocating responsible product innovation. Through an in-depth study of the durable juvenile products industry, the authors discover important relationships, for example that top management involvement, safety-first culture and robust NPD processes are paramount in increasing product safety and decreasing product recalls in firms. On the other end of the spectrum, concurrent engineering does not automatically lead to product safety, they found no "magic bullet" through which product safety can be tied to the use of a particular tool, skill, or practice. Offering a dynamic framework for aligning the interests of multiple stakeholders, including manufacturers, regulators, and consumers, the authors provide a clearer understanding of product safety and its implications for scholars, students, policy makers, and practitioners in the areas of innovation management, product management, R&D management, and responsible research and innovation.

Through key research papers from Palgrave's Journal of Operational Research, this book showcases how Operational Research can be applied to sports in a variety of ways, including: timetabling fixtures; scheduling officials; forecasting outcomes; optimizing tactics and strategy; analyzing the effects of rules and laws; planning issues, and performance measurement. The introductory chapter provides a broad overview with an examination of how this area has developed over time, and a look at its wide ranging applications to sports including football, tennis and cricket etc.

Production development is about improving existing production systems and developing new ones. The production system should be developed in integration with the product, as a part of the overall product realization process, and not in sequence after the product has already been designed. Production Development: Design and Operation of Production Systems takes a holistic viewpoint on the production system and its design process during the whole system life cycle. A working procedure demonstrating how to design and realize the production system is presented, together with a number of related production development aspects.

Production Development: Design and Operation of Production Systems is illustrated with a large number of figures and industrial examples. The book can be used as a reference for teachers and students, or as a manual for professionals within the field of production.

This book represents a comprehensive state-of-the-art picture of entrepreneurship and small business management issues in the Balkans region. It provides major theoretical and empirical evidence that offers a brighter view of these fields and aims to open up opportunities for greater dialogue in public policy. The readers would be able to enhance their knowledge on small businesses and innovation issues in the Balkans. An outcome of a long lasting endeavour, this book includes contributions of highly reputed authors and experts from the Balkans' countries. Features forewords by two well-known personalities of this field, Leo Paul Dana and Alain Fayolle.

In recent years, social innovation has experienced a steep career. Numerous national governments and large organisations like the OECD, the European Commission and UNESCO have adopted the term. Social innovation basically means that people adopt new social practices in order to meet social needs in a different or more effective way. Prominent examples of the past are the Red Cross and the social welfare state or, at present, the internet 2.0 transforming our communication and cooperation schemes, requiring new management concepts, even empowering social revolutions. The traditional concept of innovation as successful new technological products needs fundamental rethinking in a society marked by knowledge and services, leading to a new and enriched paradigm of innovation. There is multiple evidence that social innovation will become of growing importance not only concerning social integration, equal opportunities and dealing with the greenhouse effects but also with regard to preserving and expanding the innovative capacity of companies and societies. While political authorities stress the social facets of social innovation, this book also encompasses its societal and systemic dimensions, collecting the scientific expertise of renowned experts and scholars from all over the world. Based on the contributions of the first world-wide science convention on social innovation from September 2011 in Vienna, the book provides an overview of scientific approaches to this still relatively new field. Forewords by Agnes HUBERT (Member of theBureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) of the European Commission) and Antonella Noya (Senior Policy Analyst at OECD, manager of the OECD LEED Forum on Social Innovations)

Across industries, firms vary broadly on how they operate with respect to their Research & Development (R&D) activities. This volume presents a holistic approach to evaluating the critical elements of R&D management, including planning, organization, portfolio management, project management, and knowledge transfer-by assessing R&D management from different sectors. Featuring empirical research and in-depth case studies from industries as diverse as medical imaging, electric vehicles, and cyber security, the authors identify common features of successful R&D management, despite fundamental differences, such as company size, number of employees, industry sector, and the R&D budget. In particular, they consider the implications for decision making with respect to resource allocation and investments, such as site selection, purchasing, and cross-departmental communication.

The aim of this volume is to further develop the relationship between culture and manifold phenomena of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship in order to promote further and better understanding how, why, and when these phenomena are manifested themselves across different cultures. Currently, cross-cultural research is one of the most dynamically and rapidly growing areas. At the same time, creativity, inventiveness, innovation, and entrepreneurship are championed in the literature as the critical element that is vital not just for companies, but also for the development of societies. A sizable body of research demonstrates that cultural differences may foster or inhibit creative, inventive, innovative and entrepreneurial activities; and each culture has its own strengths and weaknesses in these regards. Better understanding of cultural diversity in these phenomena can help to build on strengths and overcome weaknesses. Cross-cultural studies in this field represent a comparatively new class of interdisciplinary research. This is a field where cultural, sociological, psychological, historical, economic, management, technology and business studies closely intersect. In this book, a global team of researchers representing Europe, Asia, and the Americas review, analyze, structure, systematize and discuss various concepts, assumptions, speculations, theories, and empirical research which focus on the effect of national cultures on creativity, invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship. They argue that national culture is not only an extremely important determinant of innovation and business development, but also demonstrate that some aspects relating to these phenomena may be universal among all cultures, thereby identifying those factors that may easily be transferred across cultures from those that are unique to their specific context.