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Demonstrates the popularity of children’s magazines in the UK, and the power of licensed characters for children up to seven years old; magazines aid in children’s self‐development, they are an alternative to sweets and TV as a treat, they have a variety of content, and they give parents and children quality time together. Outlines the size of this highly competitive market, and its segments of preschool, comics (mainly aimed at boys), and girls, their retail profile, and market trends. Moves on to how these magazines fit into parents’ and children’s worlds, including case studies of four major licences: Disney, Barbie, Thomas the Tank Engine, and Clifford. Explains why these licences are so successful, and suggests how brands can use them to communicate with children and parents, through suitable advertisements, competitions and promotions.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

“George” represents an enormously promising future for artificial‐intelligence (AI) avatars on the internet. Powered by award‐winning AI that was developed by British programmer Rollo Carpenter, George, the avatar, is also the product of groundbreaking work by Tim Child founder of British firm Televirtual. George is also the end‐result of four IST‐funded projects in recent years. While still a prototype, the commercial interest in George and other members of his chatbot species points to a very promising future for the technology.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

While granting Cowper the full poetic license he is entitled to, prosaically I must observe that it is not the syllables but rather the philogists who pant. They do indeed breathe rapidly in short gasps after they have established each successively deeper level of root connection in pursuit of the etymological purpose of delineating the origin and historical development of words, or of providing an account of any given word. Etymology as so defined I will designate analytic etymology and distinguish from another form of word study, which I shall call reconstructive etymology.

THE title of this short paper is somewhat of a misnomer, as the German Volks bibliothek is not the same as an English Public Library. As Dr. Schultze says: “When we speak of an English Public Library we know exactly what is meant, but the German Volks bibliothek does not convey any definite impression. Too often it still means a very small collection of books, probably gifts which are accessible to borrowers at certain hours each week. As a rule, the revenue is so trifling that after paying the small working costs there is little or nothing left for buying books.” Taking, therefore, the term Public Library for the sake of convenience, we may assume that the first Public Library in Germany was opened in Hamburg, in 1529, as the result of Luther's recommendation (1524) “that good libraries, especially in the large towns, should be established.” At the beginning of the 18th century, a number of free libraries were established, these were usually connected with churches and schools, yet their very name “free” seemed an invitation to everyone to share the treasures they contained. These libraries were principally in central Germany and Saxony.

A cyber world (CW) is a digitized world created on cyberspaces inside computers interconnected by networks including the Internet. Following ubiquitous computers, sensors, e‐tags, networks, information, services, etc., is a road towards a smart world (SW) created on both cyberspaces and real spaces. It is mainly characterized by ubiquitous intelligence or computational intelligence pervasion in the physical world filled with smart things. In recent years, many novel and imaginative researches have been conducted to try and experiment a variety of smart things including characteristic smart objects and specific smart spaces or environments as well as smart systems. The next research phase to emerge, we believe, is to coordinate these diverse smart objects and integrate these isolated smart spaces together into a higher level of spaces known as smart hyperspace or hyper‐environments, and eventually create the smart world. In this paper, we discuss the potential trends and related challenges toward the smart world and ubiquitous intelligence from smart things to smart spaces and then to smart hyperspaces. Likewise, we show our efforts in developing a smart hyperspace of ubiquitous care for kids, called UbicKids.

Government initiatives are continuously being designed to create stable and supportive environments for developing new industries. Presents a conceptual model for use by governments in creating and sustaining an appropriate climate that facilitates the national adoption of e‐business. It focuses specifically on the needs of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Also suggests six categories of e‐business readiness metrics and measures to be used for assessing how a country is performing in terms of providing a positive e‐business readiness climate. Examples of innovative initiatives are provided from Canada, The Netherlands, Norway, and Singapore. Concludes that a balance among attention to infrastructure components has not yet been achieved in these countries.

Taking Nonaka’s SECI model as the main reference, this paper aims to offer reflections on the virtual evolution of ba, the places for knowledge creation. Indeed, looking at the current scenario, widening the knowledge spiral to the inter-organizational epistemological level is inevitable. To this aim, information technology tools and virtual communities can establish effective interactions to exchange knowledge, making ba evolve congruently.

The paper takes the exemplary case of a platform developed during a European research project called “BIVEE: Business Innovation in Virtual Enterprise Environments”. The investigative approach chosen is participatory action research (PAR), with two researchers conducting PAR in real time, and two others involved ex post.

The paper shows that the virtual evolution of ba can lead the SECI model towards an inter-organizational level. Moreover, through a learning history, it describes how all the phases of the SECI process, even the Socialization one, can take place or be supported in virtual spaces.

Taking into account just one single exemplary case study provides a rich, contextualized understanding of phenomena, while allowing only some theoretical generalizations.

This paper contextualizes the SECI model within a Web platform for open innovation, to investigate whether the knowledge creation process can take place entirely within a virtual environment linking subjects from different organizations. In so doing, it applies the SECI model to the phases of the innovation process, called waves.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that affect the adoption of cloud computing by firms belonging to the high‐tech industry. The eight factors examined in this study are relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, top management support, firm size, technology readiness, competitive pressure, and trading partner pressure.

A questionnaire‐based survey was used to collect data from 111 firms belonging to the high‐tech industry in Taiwan. Relevant hypotheses were derived and tested by logistic regression analysis.

The findings revealed that relative advantage, top management support, firm size, competitive pressure, and trading partner pressure characteristics have a significant effect on the adoption of cloud computing.

The research was conducted in the high‐tech industry, which may limit the generalisability of the findings.

The findings offer cloud computing service providers with a better understanding of what affects cloud computing adoption characteristics, with relevant insight on current promotions.

The research contributes to the application of new technology cloud computing adoption in the high‐tech industry through the use of a wide range of variables. The findings also help firms consider their information technologies investments when implementing cloud computing.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate concepts that are used in depicting future visions of society, as afforded by technology, to map the extent of their use, examine the level of their dominance in different research areas and geographic boundaries, identify potential overlaps, analyse their longitudinal growth, and examine whether any of the identified concepts has assumed an overarching position.

In total, 14 concepts, each of which is used to depict visions of future information infrastructures, were identified. More than 20,000 scholarly documents related to 11 of these concepts (those with 20 or more documents) are analysed by various qualitative/quantitative methods.

The concepts most referred to are semantic web and ubiquitous computing (all years), and internet of things (Year 2013). Publications on some newer concepts (e.g. digital living, real world internet) are minimal. There are variations in the extent of use and preferred concepts based on geographic and disciplinary boundaries. The overlap in the use of these terms is minimal and none of these terms has assumed an overarching umbrella position.

This study is limited to scholarly publications; it would be relevant to also study the pattern of usage in governmental communications and policy documents.

By mapping multiplicity of concepts and the dispersion of discussions, the authors highlight the need for, and facilitate, a broader discussion of related social and societal implications.

This paper is the first to present a collective of these related concepts and map the pattern of their occurrence and growth.