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With the advance of the Silk Road Initiative proposed by China, it has been a focus of China government to develop strategic emerging industries. The development of strategic emerging industries needs the support of competitive intelligence on many aspects such as strategical planning, policy making, industrial structure adjustment, and technology innovation. However, so far there are few studies toward the competitive intelligence systems for strategic emerging industries. In this article, we focus on a number of issues related to the competitive intelligence for strategic emerging industries in China. First, we conduct a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis on the situations of strategic emerging industries in China, based on which the necessity of building a competitive intelligence (CI) service system for strategic emerging industries is discussed. Next, the authors present a framework of a CI service system for strategic emerging industries in China. The principles, components, working process, and product forms are deeply described. The CI service system proposed in this article consists of a cooperation network platform, three layered organizations, and three systems, which integrates organizations, information, people, network, and service platforms into an ecosystem to offer competitive intelligence supports for government, industry, and enterprises. Finally, the authors discuss a case study of the proposed CI service system for the new energy automobile industry.

Innovation ecosystem is an emerging and popular concept in both academic and industrial circles. It offers a new perspective for enterprise strategy positioning. A business can create more value through a healthy innovation ecosystem. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this paper, the authors utilize a new triple-layer core-periphery framework to analyze Insigma Group’s multi-platform collaboration innovation ecosystem, in order to explore the architecture and heterogeneous functions inside an innovation ecosystem.

The authors illustrate the components and working mechanisms of the four platforms, which function as ideation, entrepreneurship, financing and investment, and innovation, inside Insigma’s innovation ecosystem in detail, and explain how they interact and collaborate toward a shared aim of the whole innovation ecosystem.

The innovation ecosystem is an emerging concept. In this study, the authors combined two existing analytical frameworks of innovation ecosystem, and proposed a triple-layer core-periphery framework, which enable us to analyze the heterogeneity inside an innovation ecosystem.

The authors discussed the role of government and its policies in shaping the innovation ecosystem at the enterprise level.

The authors believe that this paper provides a holistic study of Insigma’s innovation ecosystem. The triple-layer core-periphery framework can be used to study other enterprise innovation ecosystem in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance understanding on supply chain partnership strategy-environment context co-alignment and its relationship with performance. Using the environment-strategy-performance view framework and the supporting relational perspective, the study develops a model and hypotheses to understand how supply chain partnership strategy as a response to co-align with operating context elements may impact operational and overall firm performance. Additionally, the study investigates the interrelationships among partnership strategy elements.

Data for testing the hypothesized relationships in the conceptual model was collected through a survey of managers in the Hoover’s database of US manufacturing firms. The survey sample included 115 responses from a wide variety of manufacturing forms.

Findings support the conventional wisdom relating collaboration to operational and financial performance. While product complexity associates with the “building block” resources, resource complementarity and resource specificity, technological turbulence relates significantly with only resource specificity. Interestingly, competitive intensity associates differentially with the resources – positive with resource specificity and negatively with resource complementarity. The results also reveal mediating influences of resource specificity and collaboration.

The research findings have to be considered in context. The moderate size, wide industry/firm diversity and robust research design notwithstanding, and the cross-firm nature can potentially obscure causal linkages. Besides, more comprehensive insights could be obtained by modeling the co-alignment of strategy with other factors in the operating context such as industry munificence, and market unpredictability.

Firms derive operational and financial performance benefits from close collaboration with partners since the operational enhancements from such relationships have customer service implications. Besides, the synergistic interrelationships among strategic partnership resources and their eventual impact on operational and financial performance is highlighted suggesting that firms develop a proper mix of unique and complementing set of resources and leverage them through collaborative behaviors. Importantly, the results provide a framework for managers to understand the criticality of aligning their resources with contextual elements to realize enhanced operational efficiencies, customer service, and financial benefits.

Much of the evidence on the rent generation capabilities in supply chain partnerships is still anecdotal and extant empirical research lacks adequate explanation. Thus this study offers an initial strategic response framework for an appropriate co-alignment of partnership resources with environmental context factors to realize operational benefits and overall financial performance. The framework answers the critical question: does a supply chain partnership strategy that matches “fit” or co-aligns with its critical operating environment context realize better performance? Additionally, it unravels the interrelationships among strategic partnership resources.

Collaborative teaching and learning in Kenya is at relatively immature phase. There is dearth of empirical research undertaken on school-to-school collaboration and its impact and influence on the students’ learning outcomes. The 8:4:4 system of education, which begun in 1985, and which was short of insights into the impact of collaborative, is coming to an end to pave way for 2-6-3-3-3 education curriculum framework which is largely seen as progressive. As such, collaborative teaching and learning across the whole-school system is slowly beginning to evolve – with the learners being expected to learn, un-learn and re-learn collaboratively. The Kenyan education system is highly marketized and when coupled with lack of clear national policy guidelines on inter-school collaboration, it falls short of obligating teachers to initiate or even deepen the few existing collaborative designs within and beyond their schools’ boarders. Given that the challenges facing learning appear to increase exponentially, it appears to be timely to have students and teachers from different schools come together to network and share ideas, knowledge, expertise, resources and best practices – bearing in mind that cultures that work together hold the prospect of long-term impact that is not dependent on a few individuals but the whole team (Hargreaves & O’Connor, 2017).

Introduces a decision framework for making strategic competitive choices beyond the product‐brand, business unit, or corporate levels of analysis. It adds a fourth dimension: the multi‐organizational strategic competitive unit which is responsible for planning and implementing competitive strategy in the global marketplace. Long‐range competitive success can no longer be achieved by a single company, and in recent years, the relevant competitive unit has shifted from the company to the larger competitive system of companies aligned in strategic collaborations for competitive advantage. For example, no longer is competition between one auto assembler and another, but between Toyota and its Keiretsu programme of global networking and strategic alliances with suppliers and other competitors against Ford and General Motors and their relative commitment to the more narrowly focused corporate competitive unit.

The idea of implementing supply chain management (SCM) principles for the construction industry was embraced by construction stakeholders to enhance the sector's performance. The analysis from the literature revealed that the implementation of SCM in the construction industry enhances the industry's value in terms of cost-saving, time savings, material management, risk management and others. The construction supply chain (CSC) can be managed using the pull or push system. This chapter also discusses the origin and proliferation of SCM into the construction industry. The chapter revealed that the concept of SCM has passed through five different eras: the creation era, the use of ERP, globalisation stage, specialisation stage and electronic stage. The findings from the literature revealed that we are presently in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) era. At this stage, the SCM witnesses the adoption of technologies and principles driven by the 4IR. This chapter also revealed that the practice of SCM in the construction industry is centred around integration, collaboration, communication and the structure of the supply chain (SC). The forms and challenges hindering the adoption of these practices were also discussed extensively in this chapter.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a conceptual framework of collaborative networking among structurally and functionally varying types of Innovation Laboratories, which will enable them to leverage upon diverse competencies of each other and thereby facilitate their clients (business organizations) throughout the innovation process.

The conceptual framework proposed herein is oriented around design science research, whereby the important constructs underpinning the development of framework are identified from existing literature. The framework is based upon two constructs, service-based categorization of extant Innovation Laboratories, and concepts of horizontal and vertical modes of inter-InnoLab collaboration (collaboration among Innovation Laboratories). The framework is subsequently developed in iterations based on experts’ views and discussions.

The conceptual framework presents eight different opportunities of interconnection among Innovation Laboratories including the four horizontal collaboration possibilities as network of mentors, network of process intermediaries, network of resource providers and network of network coordinators which are followed by four subsequent vertical collaboration possibilities among these horizontal collaboration networks. The proposed collaborative network of Innovation Laboratories enables undertaking of complete innovation process with four possible entry and four possible exit points for business organizations.

The conceptual framework proposed herein is first of its kind to suggest a worldwide collaborative networking among Innovation Laboratories. The applicability and usefulness of the framework is supported by the existing ad hoc type individual collaborative activities being exercised by different kinds of Innovation Laboratories as reported by Innovation Laboratory facilitators and observed in practical field.

The research study intends to gain a better understanding of members' behaviors in the context of crowdsourcing contests. The authors examined the key factors that can motivate or discourage contributing to a team and within the community.

The authors conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with Kaggle.com members and analyzed the data to capture individual members' contributions and emerging determinants that play a role during this process. The authors adopted a qualitative approach and used standard thematic coding techniques to analyze the data.

The analysis revealed two processes underlying contribution to the team and community and the decision-making involved in each. Accordingly, a set of key factors affecting each process were identified. Using Holbrook's (2006) typology of value creation, these factors were classified into four types, namely extrinsic and self-oriented (economic value), extrinsic and other-oriented (social value), intrinsic and self-oriented (hedonic value), and intrinsic and other-oriented (altruistic value). Three propositions were developed, which can be tested in future research.

The study has a few limitations, which point to areas for future research on this topic. First, the authors only assessed the behaviors of individuals who use the Kaggle platform. Second, the findings of this study may not be generalizable to other crowdsourcing platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, where there is no competition, and participants cannot meaningfully contribute to the community. Third, the authors collected data from a limited (yet knowledgeable) number of interviewees. It would be useful to use bigger sample sizes to assess other possible factors that did not emerge from our analysis. Finally, the authors presented a set of propositions for individuals' contributory behavior in crowdsourcing contest platforms but did not empirically test them. Future research is necessary to validate these hypotheses, for instance, by using quantitative methods (e.g. surveys or experiments).

The authors offer recommendations for implementing appropriate mechanisms for contribution to crowdsourcing contests and platforms. Practitioners should design architectures to minimize the effect of factors that reduce the likelihood of contributions and maximize the factors that increase contribution in order to manage the tension of simultaneously encouraging contribution and competition.

The research study makes key theoretical contributions to research. First, the results of this study help explain the individuals' contributory behavior in crowdsourcing contests from two aspects: joining and selecting a team and content contribution to the community. Second, the findings of this study suggest a revised and extended model of value co-creation, one that integrates this study’s findings with those of Nov et al. (2009), Lakhani and Wolf (2005), Wasko and Faraj (2000), Chen et al. (2018), Hahn et al. (2008), Dholakia et al. (2004) and Teichmann et al. (2015). Third, using direct accounts collected through first-hand interviews with crowdsourcing contest members, this study provides an in-depth understanding of individuals' contributory behavior. Methodologically, this authors’ approach was distinct from common approaches used in this research domain that used secondary datasets (e.g. the content of forum discussions, survey data) (e.g. see Lakhani and Wolf, 2005; Nov et al., 2009) and quantitative techniques for analyzing collaboration and contribution behavior.

The authors advance the broad field of crowdsourcing by extending the literature on value creation in the online community, particularly as it relates to the individual participants. The study advances the theoretical understanding of contribution in crowdsourcing contests by focusing on the members' point of view, which reveals both the determinants and the process for joining teams during crowdsourcing contests as well as the determinants of contribution to the content distributed in the community.

This study aims to explore the challenges of truck-sharing and effective ways of dealing with those in achieving supply chain collaboration and collaboration in transportation management (e.g. transport collaboration) for transport capacity expansion, and reducing carbon emission and traffic congestion for integrating environmental and social sustainability issues. This paper also reveals insights into successful shared-transportation and a reduction in empty trips.

This exploratory qualitative study was conducted by means of interviewing road carriers from the container transportation industry.

In a truck-sharing initiative, technical issues (e.g. carrying capacity) arise, some of which involve the container truck and some involving constraints that cannot be controlled, such as driving restrictions, seaport operating hours, and the presence of the large number of container categories pertaining to the industry. Therefore, a significant amount of “structural empty running” may always prevail. It should also be noted that some, seemingly vital, constraints can actually be changed, treated, or modified for better truck-sharing outcomes, such as building a foundation of trust and establishing coordination among road carriers.

A probable solution to the problem of increasing hinterland transport capacity is to make appropriate use of the huge number of idle truck slots that exist; this could be achieved by encouraging the acceptance of the challenges of truck-sharing realistically and suggesting an approach to handling them.

To broaden its appeal, truck-sharing initiatives must be able to overcome challenges by combining theoretical insight with an understanding of the practical aspects of such an endeavor. This original research fosters knowledge that is unique and which also has real-life applications in maritime logistics studies and supply chain literature for both port authorities and container road carriers.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2020.

The paper provides a brief description of all 440 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested in a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.