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Foundry, Design House, and integrated device manufacturers (IDM) are major characters in the semiconductor industry value chain. The purpose of this paper is to discuss patterns of characters' evolution in technology through patents classified as wafer‐design application patents and wafer‐process patents.

Various patent indicators, such as average patent citation count, and the combination of the average patent citation count and relative patent count share were used to measure the patent activity, patent quality, and the combination of the patent quality and relative patent activity share, respectively. The study period (1979‐2009) was divided into three major technology or wafer size eras, 1979‐1991 for the 6‐ and pre 6‐inch wafer era, 1989‐1999 for the 8‐inch wafer era, and 1997‐2009 for the 12‐inch wafer era.

Foundry has gradually become the technology transferor rather than purely the manufacturing capacity provider. Foundry's impact on the technology level has risen steeply on both the wafer‐process technology fields and the wafer‐design application technology fields. As a result, IDM, traditionally considered the primary technology contributor in the semiconductor value chain for the past 30 years, will continue to be challenged in the semiconductor industry.

Some hypotheses are clarified to provide managerial implications for the semiconductor industry. Owing to Foundry's rise in technology activity and quality, IDM/Design House should not merely view it as one of their capacity providers but should also pursue a technology alliance with it.

The paper clarifies the traditional hypotheses of the characters of technology in the semiconductor value chain.

This paper presents the application of Differential Evolution (DE), an evolutionary computation technique for the optimal design of gas transmission network. As a gas transmission system includes source of gas, delivery sites with pipeline segments and compressors, the design of efficient and economical network involves lot of parameters. In addition, there are many equality and inequality constraints to be satisfied making the problem highly non‐linear. Hence an efficient strategy is needed in searching for the global optimum. In this study, DE has been successfully applied for optimal design of gas transmission network. The results obtained are compared with those of nonlinear programming technique and branch and bound algorithm. DE is able to find an optimal solution with a cost that is less than reported in the earlier literature. The proposed strategy takes less computational time to converge when compared to the existing techniques without compromising with the accuracy of the parameter estimates.

The paper seeks to make a substantial contribution to the still controversial question of design foundations.

A generic hypercyclic design process model is derived from basic notions of evolution and learning in different domains of knowing (and turns out to be not very different from existing ones). The second‐order cybernetics and evolutionary thinking provide theoretical support.

The paper presents a model of designerly knowledge production, which has the potential to serve as a genuine design research paradigm. It does not abandon the scientific or the hermeneutic or the arts & crafts paradigm but concludes that they have to be embedded into a design paradigm. “Design paradigm” means that “objects” are not essential, but are created in communication and language.

Foundations cannot be found in the axiomatic statements of the formal sciences, nor in the empirical approaches of the natural sciences, nor in the hermeneutic techniques of the humanities. Designing explores and creates the new; it deals with the fit of artefacts and their human, social and natural contexts. Therefore foundations for design (if they exist at all) have to be based on the generative character of designing, which can be seen as the very activity which made and still makes primates into humans.

The hypercyclic model provides a cybernetic foundation (or rather substantiation) for design, which – at the same time – serves as a framework for design and design research practice. As long as the dynamic model is in action, i.e. stabilized in communication, it provides foundations; once it stops, they dissolve. The fluid circular phenomena of discourse and communication provide the only “eternal” essence of design.

“Design objects” as well as “theory objects” are transient materializations or eigenvalues in these circular processes. Designing objects and designing theories are equivalent. “Problems” and “solutions” as well as “foundations” are objects of this kind. This contributes to a conceptual integration of the acting and reflecting disciplines.

Although the idea of linking a shape grammar to a genetic algorithm is not new, this paper proposes a novel way of combining these two elements in order to provide a tool that can be used for design exploration. Using a shape grammar for design generation provides a way of creating a range of potential solutions to a design problem which fit with the designer's stylistic agenda. A genetic algorithm can then be used to take these designs and develop them into a much richer set of solutions which can still be recognised as part of the same family. By setting quantifiable targets for design performance, the genetic algorithm can evolve new designs which exhibit the best features of previous generations. The designer is then presented with a wide range of high scoring solutions and can choose which of these to take forward and develop in the conventional manner. The novelty of the proposed approach is in the use of a shape code, which describes the steps that the shape grammar has taken to create each design. The genetic algorithm works on this shape code by applying crossover and mutation in order to create a range of designs that can be tested. The fittest are then selected in order to provide the genetic material for the next generation. A prototype version of such a program, called Shape Evolution, has been developed. In order to test Shape Evolution it has been used to design a range of apartment buildings which are required to meet certain performance criteria.

The product family assembly line (PFAL) is a mixed model-assembly line, which is widely used in mass customization and intelligent manufacturing. The purpose of this paper is to study the problem of PFAL, a flexible (evolution) planning method to respond to product evolution for PFAL, to focus on product data analysis and evolution planning method.

The evolution balancing model for PFAL is established and an improved NSGA_II (INSGA_II) is proposed. From the perspective of data analysis, dynamic characteristics of PFAL are researched and analyzed. Especially the tasks, which stability is considered, can be divided into a platform and individual task. In INSGA_II algorithm, a new density selection and a decoding method based on sorting algorithms are proposed to compensate for the lack of traditional algorithms.

The effectiveness and feasibility of the method are validated by an example of PFAL evolution planning for a family of similar mechanical products. The optimized efficiency is significantly improved using INSGA_II proposed in this paper and the evolution planning model proposed has a stronger ability to respond to product evolution, which maximizes business performance over an effective period of time.

The assembly line designers and managers in discrete manufacturing companies can obtain an optimal solution for PFAL planning through the evolution planning model and INSGA-II proposed in this paper. Then, this planning model and optimization method have been successfully applied in the production of small wheel loaders.

Along their journey to achieve exponential growth, startups must process a vast amount of information and make quick decisions, reevaluate and adjust strategies and simultaneously redesign their organization along with the venture lifecycle. This paper delineates the evolution of startups' organizational design and identifies the influencing factors in every phase of the lifecycle.

This study adopts an explorative qualitative approach using a multiple case study methodology for six Indonesian startups. Indonesia is chosen as an emerging country in Southeast Asia with tremendous growth in digital startup businesses.

The research findings suggest that, as they experience exponential growth, startups strive to manage the tension between being structured and being flexible and hence remain innovative by combining management-centric and employee-centric approaches. In particular, this study identified three main factors that potentially influence the evolution of startups' organizational design: founders, investors and the characteristics of business and market.

The present study focuses mainly on Indonesian digital startups and does not fully explain how the influencing factors work in each phase of the venture journey.

This study offers practical contributions for startups pursuing business growth by focusing on the importance of balancing the tension between structured and flexible organizational design and placing more attention on founders, investors and business-market characteristics.

This empirical study is among the first to delineate nuances of organizational design evolution during the startup lifecycle by adopting an explorative qualitative method.

Despite the undeniable need for innovation in hospital building design, the literature highlights the disconnect between research and practice as the primary knowledge gap hindering such innovation. This study shows this focus to be an oversimplification, for the complex processes that trigger design innovations and impact their ecosystems need to be examined from a systemic perspective. This paper aims to conceptualise the evolution of hospital building design and identify and explain the main factors triggering design and construction innovations over the past 100 years.

A novel hybrid research design to mixed grounded theory (MGT) methodology, with Charmaz constructivist paradigm, is developed as a new systematic way of constructing and interpreting the concepts and interconnections among them that triggered design innovation.

This study represents a taxonomy of concepts and an explanatory innovation framework, containing 617 interconnections between 146 factors classified across 14 categories. The complex innovation ecosystem comprises multi-faceted processes between heterogenous factors with both individual and collective impacts on design innovations.

This research highlights the main components of the innovation ecosystem and its overall behaviour in this field, and the most influential and interrelated contextual factors, as well as representing and mapping generative interactions that support innovation processes. This knowledge can help hospital researchers, designers, policymakers and stakeholders adopt a multidimensional outlook to analyse the strength of all influential factors, introduce potential novel ways of collaborating, conceptualise an organisational approach, re-formulate research questions through transdisciplinary methods and introduce interdisciplinary courses and programs in architecture schools, thereby contributing to timely design innovation.

This paper aims to create a social constructivist perspective on collaborative architecture that is complementary to the rational‐analytic perspective as embodied in the “hard” project management tools.

Two theoretical perspectives from the field of design methodology, “design as co‐evolution”, and “design as a social process”, form the base for an integrated perspective of collaboration. This integrated perspective describes in detail the social process among multi functional actors involved in co‐creational processes. A third theoretical framework discusses the process of maturing conflicts and conflict prevention using the integrated perspective on collaboration. Data from two empirical studies are used to illustrate both perspectives. The first study used a protocol study approach and the second a grounded approach.

This paper shows the similarities in design methodology and conflict literature by introducing a social constructivist perspective on collaborative architecture. Especially, the notion of cognitive errors as root cause of “conflictuous” situations becomes apparent. The paper describes in detail the role of perceptual differences that can make and break collaborative architecture.

Based on these findings some hypothetical intervention strategies are proposed that collaborating actors can apply in order to prevent “conflictuous” situations to grow beyond control and even bend those situations towards innovations. Actors engaged in multi functional and multi actor creational processes might benefit from building a rudimentary mental model representing the world of the other function or other organization.

The paper brings together the intra‐subjective and inter‐subjective level in the context of co‐creating (architectural) processes by combining two very different streams of literature, design methodology and maturing conflicts. In both streams one could identify a similar distinction between cognitive processes and social processes. Collaborative architecture without having social‐emotional conflicts is realized by explicating implicitly held knowledge, understandings and perceptions. An individual cognitive effort as well as a social‐interactive effort is needed in which actors explicitly discuss differences in perception before these perceptions evolve into misleading truths. As a basis for such synchronizing discussions the actors need to have some sort of rudimentary understanding of each other's thought world and trust in each other's professionalism and factuality. Thus, preventing conflicts is not about having more communication, but about different communication!

Under the background of coexistence of information overload and information fragmentation, it is of great significance to identify influencing factors and reveal the evolution logic of public opinion for public opinion governance.

Taking 24 hot social events as research cases, firstly, the evolution process of public opinion was divided into initial stage and response stage. Secondly, eight antecedent variables were extracted for qualitative comparative analysis of fuzzy sets. Finally, the configuration path of public opinion evolution results was summarized.

The research showed that compared with the initial stage, the influencing factors in the reaction stage played a key role in the continuous evolution of public opinion. The influencing factors in the initial stage and response stage played an indispensable role in promoting the evolution of public opinion to calm down.

This research can provide reference for regulators to timely grasp the initiative, discourse power and leadership of public opinion development.

Research on the two-stage configuration path of public opinion evolution is helpful to clarify the key factors affecting the evolution trend of online public opinion of hot events.

The purpose of this paper is to explore research opportunities for service innovation and system design in network platforms by investigating representative case examples in an emerging market, China.

The authors provide four case examples to illustrate the manner in which network platforms facilitate and lead to service innovation and effective system design. Then, the authors propose nine research directions that present significant research opportunities, and the authors make theoretical and methodological suggestions.

The results indicate that research opportunities exist mainly in three areas: ecosystem design and evolution, including role design, coherence and sustainability issues; leader–participant collaboration, including governance, co-opetition and innovation stimulation issues; and transformation of traditional industries, including process informatization, modularization and standardization issues.

This study extends the platform-related literature by showing new platform features represented by case evidence from emerging economies, and provides recommendations to guide and direct management practices and efforts in platform-based service innovation and system design.