This book examines the paradigm of the engineering design process. The author discusses agile systems and engineering design. The book captures the entire design process (function bases), context, and requirements to affect real reuse. It provides a methodology for an engineering design process foundation for modern and future systems design. Captures design patterns with context for actual Systems Engineering Design Reuse and contains a new paradigm in Design Knowledge Management.

The need for enterprise flexibility in an era of rapidly advancing technology, increasing competition, and globalization, is apparent. Flexibility can be thought of as an ability of the enterprise to quickly and efficiently respond to market changes and to bring new products and services quickly to the market place. Beyond this definition, a truly flexible enterprise should proactively change the market through its ability to create new and innovative products and services. The proposed book is intended to provide a conceptual framework of Flexible Enterprise supported by researches/case applications in various types of flexibilities exhibited by a flexible enterprise. The selected papers from a variety of issues concerning the planning and operation of a flexible enterprise are organized into following four parts:

I Enterprise and Strategic Flexibility

II Organizational Flexibility

III Business Process and Information Systems Flexibility

IV Operations Flexibility "

Synthetic biology is becoming one of the most dynamic new fields of biology, with the potential to revolutionize the way we do biotechnology today. By applying the toolbox of engineering disciplines to biology, a whole set of potential applications become possible ranging very widely across scientific and engineering disciplines. Some of the potential benefits of synthetic biology, such as the development of low-cost drugs or the production of chemicals and energy by engineered bacteria are enormous. There are, however, also potential and perceived risks due to deliberate or accidental damage. Also, ethical issues of synthetic biology just start being explored, with hardly any ethicists specifically focusing on the area of synthetic biology. This book will be the first of its kind focusing particularly on the safety, security and ethical concerns and other relevant societal aspects of this new emerging field. The foreseen impact of this book will be to stimulate a debate on these societal issues at an early stage. Past experiences, especially in the field of GM-crops and stem cells, have shown the importance of an early societal debate. The community and informed stakeholders recognize this need, but up to now discussions are fragmentary. This book will be the first comprehensive overview on relevant societal issues of synthetic biology, setting the scene for further important discussions within the scientific community and with civil society.

Managing the Dynamics of New-Product Development Processes merges product-based planning, process modelling, process execution, probabilistic simulations, and simulation based decision-making into one framework called the Dynamic new-Product Development Process. It provides readers with a means of improving the management of product development through enhanced methods and tools that are specifically tailored to the characteristics and challenges of such processes. It calls for a new Product Lifecycle Management paradigm of utilizing the managed product data for management of the product's development process. Within the framework, the methods used are enhanced or modified to fit the new-product development process requirements. Each specific method is exhaustively analyzed, from the basic definition of terms through a description of the state of the art of that topic and its limitations. Then, the method enhancements are illustrated by many examples, and discussed while suggesting further research directions. Finally, the enhanced methods are integrated and demonstrated by a test case. The main two methods described are the design structure matrix (DSM) and Petri nets, which are merged into a novel concept entitled DSM nets. Managing the Dynamics of New Product Development Processes provides algorithms, proofs, and practical examples that can be used for general study of the issues concerned. The main concepts presented are applicable to systems engineering and can be used by practitioners of product development processes, such as designers, product managers, and process managers, as well as developers of process management tools for systems with dynamically changing process structures.

This book discusses the role of inclusive innovation for development in rural India. It uses the evidence of innovation in the context of skewed or limited livelihood options and multiple knowledge systems to argue that if inclusive innovation is to happen, the actors and the nature of the innovation system need reform. The book presents cases of substantive technological changes and institutional reforms enabling inclusive innovation in rural manufacturing, sustainable agriculture, health services, and the processes of technological learning in traditional informal networks, as well as in formal modern commodity markets. These cases offer lessons to enable learning and change within the state and formal science and technology (S&T) organizations. By focusing on these actors central to development economics and innovation systems framework, the book bridges the widening conceptual gaps between these two parallel knowledge domains, and offers options for action by several actors to enable inclusive innovation systems. The content is thus of value to a wide audience consisting of researchers, policy makers, NGOs and industry observers.

Technologies develop rapidly and reach hurricane levels of velocity but quality E-Content and innovative applications lag behind. This book addresses the question how content industries change within a digital environment and what role information and communication technologies play in transforming the competitive landscape. The authors argue that post-industrial societies tend to pay substantial amounts for equipment and gadgets but invest far too little in the quality of the content. As a result, much effort is and has to be spent on the enhancement of E-Content.

The contributions give an elaborate overview of:
- the specifics, challenges and prospects of content in the network economy;
- market developments of digital media services;
- paid content business models;
- impacts on scientific publishing;
- developments in the field of E-Learning;
- the interplay between technology and content with the example of interactive digital TV;
- the mobile games market;
- emerging new cross media markets;
- the need to enhance the usability of websites and mobile applications;
- how digital applications might be used to capture and store our personal experiences.

A final chapter shows the prospects of the European E-Content market and gives an overview of valuable initiatives and resources dealing with the topic of E-Content.

This book investigates key aspects of the development of engaged and entrepreneurial universities. Reflecting the complex and dynamic nature of changes in higher education institutions (HEIs), multi-level perspectives in the field are taken into account, namely the ecosystem, relationship, organisational and individual perspective. The book highlights the entrepreneurial and the social orientation of HEIs by focusing on both primary economically focused (entrepreneurial) universities and primary socially focused (engaged) universities. It challenges the understanding of the role universities and its individual stakeholders play today. The book explores a multitude of facets and perspectives on the topic and addresses both what we already know and what knowledge still needs to be acquired.

This book examines the ways in which quality management methods, tools, and practices help improve an organization's performance and achieve sustainable competitive advantages. This volume includes quality techniques and tools such as the EFQM Model, SERVPERF model, E-S-Qual scale and the ISO 9001 certification and provide a wide variety of empirical studies in different economic sectors. In the current economic environment, characterized by economic turmoil and fierce competition, quality management has become a key strategy for organizations to overcome today's challenges. Organizations benefits from implementing quality management systems by following two approaches. First, they implement quality practices aimed at ensuring customer satisfaction by considering consumer expectations and establishing strategies accordingly. Second, organizations improve processes by establishing efficient and effective process management systems that improve productivity, lower costs, reduce unnecessary expenses, eliminate all non-value added activities, and ultimately maximize excellence and customer satisfaction. Quality management thereby provides tools, techniques, and methods for continuous process improvement in both the professional and academic worlds, which, when implemented by organizations in times of crisis, enable more effective administration of activities undertaken by managers. Containing contributions from various academics and scholars, this new book provides cutting edge research, methods and techniques providing a reference manual for academics, scholars, practitioners and policy-makers.

Provides first time integrated approach to R and D-project, -pipeline and -department management from a micro-, meso- and macroscopic view.

Derives 21 easy and ready to apply rules for a better design and a superior control of R and D without losinf sight of high scientific standards.

This volume explores the field of transport sector development. Derived from the 2015 TranSopot conference held in Sopot, Poland, it discusses current trends, issues, and research on the topic. Specifically, it aims to explore sustainable development, examines current problems ranging from transport systems to transport enterprises and provides a variety of analytical methods such as economic and econometric analysis. The three most important fields of current transport research are sustainable transport development, innovation and technological progress and the conditions of transport enterprise growth and survival. Transport is an activity which is supposed to be sustainable, environmentally aware, economically optimal, socially sound and politically responsible. Striving for innovation in transport means looking for organizational and technical solutions which increase the efficiency, effectiveness and safety of transportation. However, the main research issue in the field are strategies for sustainable transport developments in urban and rural areas, instruments of internalization of external transport costs, promotion of environmentally-friendly transport behavior and improvement of transport energy efficiency. Transport infrastructure innovation, intelligent transport systems, innovations in management and finance are some of the main concerns of researchers and policy-makers in the field. Transport enterprises need to adapt to the conditions of the new economic growth perspectives. They need to create unique growth conditions, otherwise they will condemn themselves to struggle for survival. In particular, transport enterprises have to create special functioning systems and programs to diversify economic activity to use funds in the most efficient ways possible.

This book maps the latest developments in public procurement of innovation policy in various contexts and analyzes the evolution and development of the various policy solutions in broader institutional contexts. In doing so, it addresses significant theoretical and practical gaps: On the one hand, there is an emerging interest in public procurement as a policy tool for spurring innovation; yet on the other hand, the current theory, with some notable exceptions, is guided and often constrained by historical applications, above all in the defence industries. By carefully examining the cases of eleven countries, the book points to the existence of much more nuanced public procurement on the innovation policy landscape than has been acknowledged in the academic and policy debates to date.

This book examines the role of bureaucracy in modern technologically advanced societies, the traditional models of governance, and the potential of information technology to fundamentally change and improve governance. In the area of public-domain governance, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have empowered public agencies to improve their activities and to strengthen the efficiency of their operations. Technology has enabled optimized transfer of knowledge and information between government agencies, more efficient supervision and control of relationships with citizens, and higher efficiency in law enforcement through better access to information. Throughout the last decades, technology has been used to strengthen the role of state bureaucracies and the relationship between the civil service and the citizens. We have witnessed the transformative powers of ICTs in private-sector enterprises in well-structured technological landscapes, which has produced new ecosystems comprised of software developers, providers, and consumers who provide and consume new products and services in ecosystems that are based on clear technological standards and shared modular generic artefacts, which allow for distributed peer production. ICTs will shape cultural and civic discourse and create products, services and tools, relying on the open toolsets, technologies and exchange of knowledge between peers. This book will be of particular interest to government CIOs, IT/IS managers, researchers, students, and practitioners in technical sciences, public administration, business management, public policy and IS management.

This open access book examines how the social sciences can be integrated into the praxis of engineering and science, presenting unique perspectives on the interplay between engineering and social science. Motivated by the report by the Commission on Humanities and Social Sciences of the American Association of Arts and Sciences, which emphasizes the importance of social sciences and Humanities in technical fields, the essays and papers collected in this book were presented at the NSF-funded workshop 'Engineering a Better Future: Interplay between Engineering, Social Sciences and Innovation', which brought together a singular collection of people, topics and disciplines. The book is split into three parts: A. Meeting at the Middle: Challenges to educating at the boundaries covers experiments in combining engineering education and the social sciences; B. Engineers Shaping Human Affairs: Investigating the interaction between social sciences and engineering, including the cult of innovation, politics of engineering, engineering design and future of societies; and C. Engineering the Engineers: Investigates thinking about design with papers on the art and science of science and engineering practice.

Economic and financial crises have brought the rise of unemployment, reduction of economic growth and emergence of global imbalances and tensions as countries and regions have suffered the effects of a variety of internal and external shocks. In this context of constant disruption, the scientific community has struggled to provide satisfactory answers to current economic challenges within standard frameworks. Focusing on the interconnections between innovation and resilience, this edited book contributes to a better understanding of how the crisis affects innovation and the capacity of territories to adapt and evolve. It offers both theoretical and empirical contributions that debate the notions of resilience in regional and urban contexts and serve as case studies related to innovation strategies and territorial clusters.

Business model innovations are conceived and implemented by a special type of entrepreneur: business model pioneers. This book presents 14 compelling case studies of business model pioneers and their companies, who have successfully introduced new business ideas to the market. The examples range from industries such as retail, media and entertainment to services and industrial projects. For each example, the book provides information on the market environment at the time of launch and illustrates the driving forces behind these business models. Moreover, current market developments are highlighted and linked to the evolution of the business models. Lastly, the authors present the profile of a typical business model pioneer.

This book discusses how systems thinking and approaches can aid management consultants in navigating the complexities of client advisory in current realities. It thereby brings to the forefront aspects of holism, flexibility and responsibility - the keys to success in today's world. Management consultants are called in to offer an independent expert view of an organisation/ a situation and are expected to address some of the most pressing problems businesses face. The client does not exist in a silo, but in a complex environment that lies at the intersection of a range of internal and external factors that are often unseen and unpredictable. The organisation itself presents an alien territory that the consultant is expected to acclimatise to within a very short period of time, and come up with solutions that "insiders" would not have been able to visualise. The book presents a range of ideas, concepts and reference cases that are relevant and topical for consultants in their daily work. It argues that systems thinking allows holism and flexibility in management consulting - while holism is about the ability to encompass the environmental and organisational complexity, flexibility is about the ability to think creatively and adopt different approaches to accommodate this complexity. With commentaries, case studies, conceptual models and perspectives that cut across multiple industries, sectors and countries, this book is a valuable resource for academics and professionals alike. The book's inner pages and its page on Springer.com contain additional comments providing perspectives of clients, industry experts and academia.

The purpose of this volume is to shape conceptual tools to understand the impact of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the organization of universities. Traditional research-based universities, the most typical representatives of the higher education system, find themselves challenged by the speed and the wide range of technical innovations, but also by a vast array of implicit assumptions and explicit promises associated with the distribution of digital media.

The author observes that as universities increasingly use digital media (computers and the Internet) to accomplish their tasks, a transformation takes place in an "evolutionary" rather than in a revolutionary way.Using the University of Klagenfurt as an in-depth case study, he explores such dynamic issues as how digital media affect the practice of research, the preservation and dissemination of knowledge (for example, through publishing and archiving), and delivery of education at universities.More broadly, he considers issues of organizational culture and design, administration, and leadership as universities integrate digital technologies into all aspects of their operations."

Presents research in Employee-Driven Innovation, an emergent field of study that meets the demand for exploiting new innovative potentials in organizations. There is a growing interest in creating new knowledge in innovation, emphasizing human resources and social processes. The authors intend to take the global lead in research on these areas.

This book applies a new analytical framework to the study of the evolution of large Internet companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon and Samsung. It sheds light on the dynamics of business groups, which are approached as 'business ecosystems,' and introduces the concept of Epigenetic Economic Dynamics (EED), which is defined as the study of the epigenetic dynamics generated as a result of the adaptation of organizations to major changes in their respective environments. The book augments the existing literature on evolutionary economic thinking with findings from epigenetics, which are proving increasingly useful in analyzing the workings of large organizations. It also details the theoretical and conceptual nature of recent work based on evolutionary economics, mainly from the perspective of generalized Darwinism, resilience and related variety, and complements the work conducted on evolutionary economics by applying the analytical framework of EED. It makes it easier to forecast future dynamics on the Internet by proving that a sizable number of big business groups are veering from their initial paths to take unprecedented new directions as a result of competition pressure, and as such is a valuable resource for postgraduates and researchers as well as those involved in economics and innovation studies.

The book discusses, elaborates on and answers questions to the following points: Firstly, what has changed through the information technology represented by software, Internet and big data? How do these changes effect the production relationships, the production mode and the industrial development model? Can China realize a "great-leap-forward" in economic development by promoting such a new Internet economy? Secondly, what is the format shown by the Internet economy? Is the Internet economy a market economy, or a planned economy, or is it an economic complex format which combines the planned economy and the market economy? What is the structure of the future economy? Which entities will compete with each other throughout the industries? What is the format of the future financial investment industry? Why does the Internet economy have a revolutionary impact on the economic base and the superstructure? Thirdly, let us look back on the traditional manufacturing industry. What on earth is the core value of the manufacturing industry? How is the core technology and core value of manufacturing realized? Why can it be that the industrial Internet will become a rare historical opportunity for China's manufacturing industry and economy to achieve a "great-leap-forward" development? Finally, in the big economic tide of Internet and big data, what are the future variables of China's economy? What is the established economic policy of the United States for the global economy and industries? How should the economic variables of the United States be best dealt with, those that are determined as "US priority" and "the return of manufacturing industry" strongly promoted by the U.S. President Trump?

This book shows the patterns of the fuzzy front end of innovation and how it can be managed successfully. Topics in this book cover traditional instruments and processes such as technology monitoring, market-oriented research management, lead-user developments, but also modern approaches such as frontloading, user community-driven innovation, crowdsourcing, anthropological expeditions, technological listening posts in global R&D settings, cross-industry innovation processes, open innovation, and IP cycle management. Contributions are based on latest research and cases studies on this new paradigm. The authors investigate this phenomenon, linking the practice of the early innovation phase to the established body of innovation research. Conceptional articles complement case studies to provide the reader with insight on managing the fuzzy front end of innovation.Lessons learned with success factors and checklists complement each chapter. "

Industrial engineering is not known for its contribution to management requirements, which can be both challenging and varied. However, productivity and profitability are subjects that preoccupy manufacturers, distributors, warehouse managers and third-party logistics firms, many of which are multinational companies that cater to an end customer thousands of miles away. Industrial engineers must therefore follow a balance between maintaining a commitment to basic traditional tools that have been proven to improve productivity and keeping up with the evolution of their profession by staying informed about and trained in modern approaches.

This "balance" of essential information, theory, case studies, and a thorough examination of many timeless applications for productivity and profitability is evidenced in Beyond World-Class Productivity. It serves as a practical, informative source of information in the field of industrial engineering because it is neither an instruction manual nor a theoretical textbook. Practical examples and commentary come from the author's 40 years of real-world experience on the shop floor and in the boardroom.

Industrial engineering has a tendency to devote its time to "non-real gain" activities, or to making small improvements occasionally with a small-cycle time reduction. The effect of this "improvement" is calculated by annual reduced cycle time - an effect which consequently is practically invisible.

Instead, industrial engineers should aim to achieve real gain; for example, reducing the allocated number of workers to reduce paid hours immediately, but accruing the same or more powerful results. Management, particularly in human resources departments, is most interested in this type of gain and industrial engineering should be a department that fosters such connections with management. Industrial engineering tools are effective enough to support management with these goals in mind.

Featuring case studies from the industrial and tourism sectors, this book provides an interdisciplinary perspective on the effect of total quality management on business and innovation strategies. The principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) have been widely researched and analyzed as an essential tool for businesses to compete in a globalized economy. This book presents the latest research on the applications of TQM across different functions such as customer service, human resources management and cost control. It demonstrates how the utilization of TQM tools, such as the SERVQUAL model, Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS), High Involvement Practices (HIWP) and the EFQM excellence model, impacts a firm s performance, enhances productivity and innovation and reduces cost, thereby allowing them to compete more effectively in the global market. Building on the extensive literature on the relationship between TQM and business performance, the authors argue that quality acts as a powerful competitive tool that companies should embrace in their corporate strategy. By promoting activities that result in greater efficiency, improved control and management of the organization (internal quality), firms can achieve significant improvement in customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, social impact and business results (external quality) and exceed expectations in these areas."

This book explores how the business transformation taking place in Japan is influenced by the digital revolution. Its chapters present approaches and examples from sectors commonly understood to be visible arenas of digital transformation-3D printing and mobility, for instance-as well as some from not-so-obvious sectors, such as retail, services, and fintech. Business today is facing unprecedented change especially due to the adoption of new, digital technologies, with a noticeable transformation of manufacturing and services. The changes have been brought by advanced robotics, the emergence of artificial intelligence, and digital networks that are growing in size and capability as the number of connected devices explodes. In addition, there are advanced manufacturing and collaborative connected platforms, including machine-to-machine communications. Adoption of digital technology has caused process disruptions in both the manufacturing and services sectors and led to new business models and new products. While examining the preparedness of the Japanese economy to embrace these changes, the book explores the impact of digitally influenced changes on some selected sectors from a Japanese perspective. It paints a big picture in explaining how a previously manufacturing-centric, successful economy adopts change to retain and rebuild success in the global environment. Japan as a whole is embracing, yet also avoiding-innovating but also restricting-various forms of digitalization of life and work. The book, with its 17 chapters, is a collaborative effort of individuals contributing diverse points of view as technologists, academics, and managers.