Search results

Major technological innovations are usually associated with central R&D facilities in large companies and leading edge technologies that are key to unlocking business opportunities in promising, embryonic markets. The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze several factors that determine the success of a major process innovation in a mature but changing industry. The paper furthermore shows that the periphery of a company can be as innovative as headquarters and central R&D‐labs.

This paper is based upon an in depth case study of the “Business Group Influenza” (BGI) at Solvay, a multinational company in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry based in Brussels. BGI turned a mature business into a growth engine for the company through the development of a cell culture technology. Next, we identified 20 success factors of innovations based on extensive literature research. These factors can be placed in four main categories; strategic factors, market environment factors, development process factors, and organizational factors. In this paper, we apply these key drivers to the renewal of Solvay's influenza vaccine business.

It is found that a systematic analysis of the case using the 20 key drivers allows us to evaluate the management of this major innovation process. In this way, one can easily spot the drivers that need more attention or require another management approach. We also find that the management of attention of the top‐management is crucial in long‐term innovation projects.

The contribution of this study is twofold. On the one hand, the rejuvenation of Solvay's influenza vaccine business shows that changing markets conditions in combination with a breakthrough process technology can turn a cash cow into a growth business. On the other hand, the systematic analysis of key innovation drivers allows one to identify the strength and weaknesses in the management of a long‐term, breakthrough process innovation.

This paper discusses how each year we make lofty goals that we have difficulty following through on, it then offers some tips and examples for following through on your “going to dos”.

The author applies his own work experience as a business coach and uses real life business examples.

The author identifies a few common errors that people make that make it harder to achieve goals.

The author concludes that anyone can reach their goals if they approach them in the right way, and offers practical tips about how to do this.

The paper is relevant to most people, but it is especially geared to business people. It will appeal to anyone who has had trouble reaching the yearly self‐improvement goals that they have set for themselves.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the drivers of information technology (IT) use in the supply chain. Given that the use of IT in the supply chain has been a popular topic of research it is timely to analyse the literature to identify patterns and key factors for success.

A grounded theory approach is used to build a conceptual model using peer‐reviewed journal articles. The selection criteria are derived from the literature review and these are used to extract suitable articles from the online databases. The term “supply chain” is used with all the selection key words to make the search more specific and relevant to the expected search outcome.

The drivers of IT use in the supply chain are related to three levels of complexity and organisational change. The first level (low) involves a less complex use of IT that is driven through a desire to reduce costs. The drivers are cost reduction, reduced lead and cycle times, increased operational capability and information quality improvement. The second level (medium) involves a medium level of complexity that is characterised by networking and collaboration. The drivers are better relationships and information accessibility. Level two requires the drivers for level one. The most complex level is aimed at organisational transformation. The drivers are market sharing expansion, risk sharing and reduction, high quality service and better decision making. Level three also requires the drivers for levels one and two.

The study identified that many organisations use IT in the supply chain (SC) without understanding the drivers of IT use and this impacted on their success. In addition, it found that drivers can be classified into a hierarchy of benefits.

A lack of understanding of the drivers of IT use in the SC can be overcome by using the list of specific drivers and how these relate to organisational change. The manager's increased understanding of these factors should improve the success rate of IT investment in the SC by being more aware of how requirements relate to benefits and improvement.

The study is the first of its kind to analyse a large number of research articles to determine the drivers of IT use in the supply chain.

This narrative inquiry centers on teachers' longitudinal experiences of policy-related reforms systematically introduced to T. P. Yaeger Middle School, a campus located in the fourth largest, second most diverse city in America. The embedded research study, with roots tracing back to 1997, uses five interpretive tools to capture six mandated changes in the form of a story serial. Special research attention is afforded pay-for-performance, the sixth reform in the series. The deeply lived consequence of receiving bonuses for his teaching performance prompted Daryl Wilson, Yaeger's long-term literacy department chair, to proclaim “data is [G]od.” Wilson's emergent, inventive metaphor aptly portrays the perplexing conditions under which his career ended, and how my long-term research project likewise concluded.

The aim is to explore users' reactions to health information web sites from the perspective of trust, retrieval of relevant information and ease‐of‐use, and to establish the link between perceived quality, trust, and usability.

An analysis of three Australian health web sites was undertaken. A usability test was conducted on those three web sites resulting in 207 completed user evaluations. The evaluations included both quantitative and qualitative data.

The three investigated health information web sites do not meet the needs of health consumers. More details such as how information is selected to engender greater trust need to be provided. The retrieval of relevant information could be improved through the implementation of functionality such as spell checking and information differentiation. Finally, ensuring web sites are easy to use contributes to the level of trust users have in a web site.

This was a relatively small study investigating only three generic Australian health web sites, the results however suggest that a larger study looking at other health web sites is needed.

For government agencies developing health information web sites more attention needs to be paid to the design of these web sites if users are to be encouraged to use the web site and return. The research suggests that effective health information web sites must be perceived to be of reliable quality, be trustworthy, have some level of intelligence to assist in the retrieval of relevant information, and be easy to use.

Although there is much research relating to the relationship between web site design and trust for e‐commerce transactional web sites this work has not been undertaken for web sites designed for information retrieval, in particular little work has been done of health information web sites. This paper fills in some of the gaps.

The enduring popular image of James Bond is (in the words of the theatrical trailer for Dr No) ‘the gentleman agent with the licence to kill’. Yet the screen Bond is hardly a hero in the manner of gentlemanly archetypes such as Cary Grant and David Niven (reputedly Ian Fleming’s preferred choice for the role). This chapter will explore how the image of Bond in the films has changed over time both in response to wider social and cultural archetypes of masculinity and due to the different performance styles of the various actors to play the role: Sean Connery, whose rough-hewn Scottishness can be seen as a means of representing the ‘otherness’ of Fleming’s character (‘Bond always knew there was something alien and un-English about himself’); George Lazenby, whose one-off appearance as an emotionally damaged Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service anticipated later portrayals of the character; the parodic variant of Roger Moore; the brooding Byronic hero of Timothy Dalton; the ‘Milk Tray Man’ charm of Pierce Brosnan; and Daniel Craig, whose combination of bull-in-a-china-shop physicality and vulnerable masculinity (literally so in Casino Royale) has by common consent successfully transformed Bond from a cartoon superman into a twenty-first century action hero.

Researchers studying festivals have overlooked exhibitors as a population within tourism research. Instead, researchers focus primarily on examining festival visitors' economic impacts and motivations for attending. Festival exhibitors have been overlooked because they are considered a part of the overall festival product. The purpose of this paper is to propose a research agenda for festival exhibitors by analyzing embedded relationships created from their festival participation.

A literature review was conducted to explore why exhibitors have not been studied in festival research. A search of publications in other relevant fields was also conducted in order to review how exhibitors have been studied. An analytical framework was developed to analyze embedded relationships within festival exhibitors.

The analytical framework developed revealed that the exhibitor relationship with the festival can be divided into three dimensions: the festival, the market place and the business. In total, nine major lines of research topics were suggested to understand the relationships uncovered within festival exhibitors.

The academic researcher is introduced to the potential research opportunities in examining festival exhibitors and is pointed in the direction of relevant research questions and disciplines that would equip them with the practical tools of investigation.

This paper makes an original contribution to knowledge in the study of events and festivals because festival exhibitors are not studied. By alerting the reader to the applicability and value of exhibitors to understanding festivals, this paper aims to encourage scholars to empirically investigate exhibitors. This will thereby lead to a more diverse literature on festivals and will provide a further understanding of the contribution festivals make to local and regional economies.

The aim of the paper is to explore conceptually and empirically the application of the concept of IT readiness to small firms.

The approach taken was a questionnaire administered to small manufacturing business owners in the Liguria region of Italy. Data were analysed using factor and cluster analysis.

IT readiness concept appears valid with the emergence of three constructs: strategic vision; project management capability; and IT application infrastructure. The date analysis yielded four distinctive and varying profiles of small business owners.

This quantitative study exploring a cross section of small firms suggests antecedents to change have been ignored relative to IT adoption decisions.

Provision of policy and support services requires a much more nuanced approach to small businesses.

There are very few studies of IT readiness in the literature, making the paper original in its intent. The construction of the IT readiness concept appears robust when subjected to empirical testing and yields a number of specific small business profiles with respect to IT.