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This chapter treats new product development in relation to management and organization. The data comprise new product development within four Danish manufacturing firms studied by interviewing the management, product leaders and other employees. The results show how integrated product development procedures have furthered a stronger market orientation. The stage-gate version of integration has fertilized knowledge across functions. The new procedures have made the understanding of cooperation across functions topical and have been followed up by more involvement of the employees. The changes have run into barriers which to a certain extent have been met by organizational changes.

The aim of this book is to contribute to the understanding of product innovation – how it takes place and how it affects the economy. Our analysis of product innovation links it to interactive learning and to the performance of firms. On the basis of unique data sets and detailed case studies we study the interconnections between these three elements from different angles. We believe that the book will prove helpful for managers, employees and policy makers as well as for all those in academia who wants to understand the role of product innovation in the economy.

This chapter introduces the main aims and ambition with the anthology, which is to bring together research from diverse perspectives on doping and Image and Performance Enhancing Drug (IPED) use. The chapter highlights existing but often backgrounded links between sport and fitness doping research and present a re-reading of the cultural history of doping through which simplistic divisions, such as that between sport and fitness, are deconstructed. Further, by unbinding the hegemonic divide between sports doping and fitness doping, new insights (and themes) concerning anti-doping, health and risk, new emerging doping spaces and the gendering of this field of research are brought to the fore. These themes are then used as point of departure when introducing the different chapters and scholars that contribute to the volume at hand.

This chapter focuses on public research as one possible external source of knowledge available for private companies seeking scientific support in relation to product development projects, and analyses inter-organizational relations between public research institutions and innovative firms including enabling conditions for effective knowledge creation in such public-private interactions. Two case studies of product development projects based on sensor technology are used to illuminate how innovation is carried out in such interactions. The chapter concludes with extracting crucial features for successful public-private collaboration on knowledge creation and innovation.

Do women exhibit greater financial risk aversion than men? We answer this question using attitudinal and behavioral specifications of risk aversion drawn from the 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). To approximate attitudinal specification of risk aversion, we use individuals’ self-reported financial risk tolerance. We use individuals’ relative risk aversion, that is, the effect of wealth on the proportion of assets categorized as risky as behavioral specification of risk aversion. We find that while women display greater attitudinal risk aversion, gender difference in behavioral risk aversion depends upon individuals’ marital status and role in household finances. Single women exhibit greater behavioral risk aversion compared to single men. However, this gender difference does not exist when we compare behavioral risk aversion of married women and men in charge of household finances.

This chapter extracts a broad range of learning situations in connection with product innovation. The data comprise interviews with the management and employees in five Danish manufacturing firms visited during 2000–2001. Among important learning situations and factors promoting learning have been found the firms’ contacts with customers, project leaders’ cross functional coordinating activities, and cooperation with suppliers and knowledge institutions. The restraints upon learning comprise inter alia strategic patterns, tight time planning, old routines and communication difficulties, changing of roles, ad hoc decisions on training and education and some times among employees lack of motivation. Some policy perspectives are outlined.

This chapter presents an auto-ethnographic journey into the world of women's bodybuilding and the role performance-enhancing drugs play in the pursuit of muscularity in this growing, but hard-to-reach, subculture. The research addresses a paucity in the literature and paves the way for further research to inform public health initiatives for this population. Synthesizing journal entries, field observations and informal conversations recorded over the course of 18 months, this chapter provides insight into the rituals and practices present in bodybuilding culture. This embodied narrative explores the decision-making process surrounding anabolic androgenic steroid use in the context of competitive endeavour, including the impact that cultural norms, peer influence and personal narrative have on their uptake. It also sheds light on the experiences of being a woman in a man's world and the additional stigma women face when attempting to increase their muscularity. It also highlights the personal and professional challenges involved in auto-ethnographic endeavour.

We examine the construction of “empty categories” – that is, categories created prior to the existence of producers and consumers – and their implications for industry emergence. Drawing on the case of the ji-biru category among Japanese microbreweries, we exemplify how external actors – including governments, the media, consultants, and other entities – frequently create empty categories that are “legitimate yet not legitimated” (Vergne & Wry, 2014). We show how such empty categories generate lower entry barriers, resulting in higher founding rates and significant innovation. We highlight how empty categories impede evolutionary forces by inhibiting shared understandings of what constitutes a legitimate category member.

This chapter focuses upon two types of interaction. One is the interaction between departments within the Danish Trademark and Patent Office (DKPTO). Additionally, the interaction between the DKPTO and firms is analysed. The chapter discusses in what ways an institution like a national patent office is important for product innovation, not just by providing an appropriability system for product innovations in firms, but additionally by improving the long-run capabilities of both firms and the DKPTO itself. The research builds upon interviews in the DKPTO, case stories from firms and of patent granting procedures.

With respect to internal competencies, it is found that no efforts were carried out to create environments for learning between the departments in line with the “learning organizations” described in earlier chapters. However, taking the tasks of the departments into account, the need for such efforts was not obvious. Links to external organizations are not only confined to industrial firms. Many firms, especially the large firms, would not mind if the tasks of the national patent system were moved to the EPO-level. On the other hand, in particular, small, new firms may feel more confident with a national patent office.