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The purpose of this paper was to determine whether innovativeness is a personal attribute that enhances entrepreneurial success and to obtain external validation for the Valuable Novelty Theory of innovation and the Innovator Mindset (IM) instrument for measuring personal innovativeness.

This is the final paper in a series of three articles. The first article, Valuable Novelty: A Proposed General Theory of Innovation and Innovativeness, laid out the Valuable Novelty Theory and the Innovation Cycle. The second article Evaluating Mindset as a Means of Measuring Personal Innovativeness explained the design of the IM instrument. For this study, some 300 entrepreneurs were given the IM assessment and asked to provide data on their ventures’ recent performance. The data were then analyzed to see whether differing IM scores reflected different business outcomes. Due to the heavily skewed nature of the business performance data, this required the development of a non-traditional approach to data analysis that combined Rasch measurement, segmentation of the data into quantiles and hypothesis testing using simulations.

The findings were that there is a robust relationship between personal innovativeness and multiple measures of value creation. An unexpected finding was a Value Creation Curve, a non-linear pattern that appears to characterize the relationship between innovativeness and value creation regardless of the specific type of value.

Key limitations of this study were that it was retrospective and focused on value creation in a particular endeavor – the launching of a new business. A longitudinal study with a control group would further clarify the relationship between innovativeness and value creation. Research in other settings is needed to explore the relevance of innovativeness to other types of value creation.

This is the first study to demonstrate and measure a relationship between personal innovativeness and entrepreneurial value creation, with effect sizes that appear to exceed any previously studied personal attributes. It confirms the role innovativeness plays in creating value, demonstrates the utility of the IM assessment as a research instrument and provides a tool that entrepreneurs and investors can use to more accurately predict the likely outcomes of business ventures.

A general theory of innovation is proposed based on an analysis of the common characteristics and dynamics of two innovation archetypes, natural selection and the scientific method, along with innovation in other contexts such as business and technology. This Valuable Novelty Theory posits a probabilistic pattern of innovation called the Innovation Cycle and a complimentary pattern called the Status Quo Cycle. This approach is designed in part to enable the measurement and comparison of innovativeness across a variety of activities, disciplines, and contexts. Two companion articles apply and test this theory.

This paper is one of three published in series, following a hypothetical deductive approach. This first article lays a theoretical foundation. The second article, “Evaluating Mindset as a Means of Measuring Innovativeness,” explains the creation of an evaluation instrument that applies this theory. A third article, “Innovativeness as a Predictor of Entrepreneurial Value Creation,” uses that instrument to test the theory’s predictive capabilities.

This article describes the creation and testing of an Innovator Mindset instrument for assessing personal innovativeness, using an Innovativeness Index. Its design is based on the Valuable Novelty Theory of innovation, and expands on that theory by applying it to human behavior and cognition. The design and methodology is explained, along with some of the instrument's theoretical and practical implications for fostering innovation. This is the second of three articles that together describe a hypothetical-deductive approach. The first article A Proposed Cross-Disciplinary Theory of Innovation and Innovativeness Generalized from Innovation Archetypes lays out the Valuable Novelty Theory and the Innovation Cycle. The third article Personal Innovativeness as a Predictor of Entrepreneurial Value Creation uses the instrument described here to predict innovation success.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a general review for USA and international academic faculty and administrators of the dominant themes and history of quality and assessment in both industry and Higher Education, and how they relate to each other in order to stimulate and encourage debate as well as influence policy.

A range of published works (1976‐2005) in both the fields of industrial quality and quality and assessment in higher education are reviewed and arranged contextually so as to tell a collective “story” about their origins, similarities, and differences. This general review provides the reader with a structured historical examination of these concepts with practical emphasis on potential lessons learned.

Provides information on the major quality theorists and relates the types of quality (as defined in industrial terms) to the enterprise of higher education. Even more important, quality and assessment are defined within the context of US higher education. Though the terms are debatable, what is certain is that increased competitive pressure, finite individual and institutional resources, and increased demand for universal access, have made assessing the quality of higher education a major public, private, and international concern.

The value of this paper lies in its simple, yet comprehensive treatment of the subject‐matter. There is an information gap between industry and higher education and, as such, many lessons are lost. With an increasingly turbulent higher education environment, academic leaders and faculty, regardless of nationality, should consider the collective context of quality and assessment as more than an account of things past or present, but as a guide to planning, leading, and ultimately assessing future calls for reform.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

This study deals with the computational simulation and inverse analysis of the cooling treatment of the hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy in neonates. A reduced-order model is implemented for real-time monitoring of the internal body temperatures. The purpose of this study is to sequentially estimate the transient temperatures of the brain and other body regions with reduced uncertainties.

Pennes’ model was applied in each body element, and Fiala’s blood pool concept was used for the solution of the forward bioheat transfer problem. A state estimation problem was solved with the Sampling Importance Resampling (SIR) algorithm of the particle filter method.

The particle filter method was stable and accurate for the estimation of the internal body temperatures, even in situations involving large modeling and measurement uncertainties.

The proposed reduced-order model was verified with the results of a high-fidelity model available in the literature. Validation of the proposed model and of the solution of the state estimation problem shall be pursued in the future.

The solution of the state estimation problem with the reduced-order model presented in this paper has great potential to perform as an observer of the brain temperature of neonates, for the analysis and control of the systemic cooling treatment of neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy.

The main treatment for hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy in neonates is the cooling of affected regions. Accurate and fast models might allow the development of individualized protocols, as well as control strategies for the cooling treatment.

This paper presents the application of the SIR algorithm for the solution of a state problem during the systemic cooling of a neonate for the treatment of the hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy.

The corporate disclosure decision is one of the most difficult decisions any corporation, its management and counsel will face. If a corporation learns that it or one of its employees has engaged in a fraud or crime, the corporation, through its officers and directors, must decide whether it should disclose the fraud or crime to the government and, if the decision to disclose is made, what the scope of the disclosure should be. These decisions are fraught with dangers which threaten to expose the corporation and its employees to civil and criminal liability.