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This paper outlines the origin and continuing development of an intranet within Wirral Metropolitan College. The College intranet has grown as a result of a number of initiatives introduced which have been designed to improve student and staff access to Internet‐based and in‐house generated learning resources.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between Joseph Schumpeter’s economics and the rise of General Motors (GM).

The paper uses regression analysis and time series analysis of market synchronization.

There is a strong link between GM rise to dominance of the domestic automobile industry and nuanced features of Schumpeterian economics.

The paper furthers the examination of the role of information economics on marketing channel performance.

Information helps in production decisions by synchronizing production with consumer demand.

Economic efficiency enhances the human welfare for better forecasting, lower inventories and greater profits.

This topic has been explored before but methodology used in this paper is innovative. The paper uses Granger causality.

Automobile industry has been the backbone of manufacturing sector in any country. During the past decade, passenger car industry has emerged as the one of the growing sectors in the Indian economy. Technological features in the passenger cars industry has been evolving in the global market, and customers have been the most important stakeholders to judge the requirement of these features. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the customers’ need for these emerging technologies using Kano model of customer satisfaction.

This paper has used the Kano model to assess the customer satisfaction for Indian passenger car companies. Overall, 250 customers of passenger cars from Northern India have been surveyed using well-structured questionnaire designed as per the Kano model. On the basis of responses, this study has categorized the technological attributes of passenger cars as attractive, must be, one-dimensional and indifferent.

“Auto Gear Shift” system has emerged as a must be attribute. “Premium surround system” has been categorized under one-dimensional attribute. “Communication between vehicles,” “integration with smart phone,” “connecting applications,” “dual-stage airbags,” “in-dash navigation system,” “rearview camera,” “heated and cooled seats,” “built-in fourth generation long term evolution,” “Wi-Fi system” and “automated window cleaning system” have emerged as attractive features. The customers have been indifferent about “gesture control,” “reality display on car wind screen” and “run-on-flat tyre.” In contradiction to the popular belief, this study has found that customers have shown Indifferent attitude toward “hydrogen fuel-operated cars” and “battery cars.”

This present study gives insight about the acceptability of various emerging technological features in Indian car market. This study has fulfilled the existing dearth in assessing the customers’ insight about the implementation of these emerging technologies in Indian cars. This paper will be helpful to the manufacturers to inculcate the voice of the customers in designing the new technologies for the passenger cars.

Previous studies across the globe have applied Kano model for assessing customers’ satisfaction in various industries, but according to the authors’ knowledge, hardly any study was conducted in context of technological attributes for Indian passenger car companies.

This paper aims to analyse the viability of production processes in the framework of three industries, referred to here as “automotive”, “machine-tool” and “other transport material”. This idea is of interest as a result of the cognitive convergence that has arisen from the widespread of information and communication technologies in the technical solutions used by most of the product fields that make up the manufacturing industry.

Under the framework of evolutionary theory and based on the cognitive composition of the technical solutions used by the industries studied, this paper has drawn up technology profiles for those industries from the viewpoint of formal logic. These profiles will help us to analyse their potential and difficulties so as to bridge the cognitive gap and enabling them to access new paths and set up processes to diversify their output. Interviews with company management staff and high-ranking experts have provided us with highly useful information to help us complete the theoretical reflection and check it against expected behaviour patterns.

The results confirm that firms in the industries studies find it difficult to drive forward diversification processes. The analysis provides a theoretical explanation for the empirical results that can be found in the literature on the extent to which path dependency processes explain technology dynamics.

The limitations of this study lie on the one hand in the small number of firms interviewed (it would be useful to extend the sample to include other medium- and high-technology industries to see whether the results are confirmed) and on the other hand, in the possibility that the Covid-19 crisis may affect results, investment decisions and access to financial resources, and thus, upset plans for diversification.

There is a consensus that decision-making in general, and in management in particular, is plagued by unpredictability, risk and uncertainty (Baldwin et al., 2005; Bergh et al., 2011). Managers making deliberate strategic choices – which usually require long time horizons and involve high risk (Perello-Marin et al., 2013) – need to know whether the competitive future of their firms lies mainly in product innovation (diversification), in process and organisational innovation, in the internationalisation of production, in mergers or in other, alternative paths (Sydow et al., 2009). This study presents empirical evidence of the possibilities and difficulties faced by firms based on their technology profiles. This is a complex approach that calls for more research effort if it is to become an option for enhancing resilience and flexibility at firms and strengthening their ability to react to changes. According to Raynor (2002) diversification, understood dynamically, provides a way for companies competing in especially turbulent industries to hedge against uncertain future reconfigurations of industry boundaries. Palich et al. (2000) state that compared with single-business firms, firms engaging in related diversification are able to exploit synergies across product units by consolidating business activities in manufacturing, marketing, raw material purchases and R&D, and thus, achieve both scale and scope economies.

The manuscript is absolutely original in terms of its approach and design and sets out to analyse industrial diversification processes on the basis of the cognitive characteristics of the technical solutions used by the various industries.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse cooperation in R&D in the automobile industry in Spain. It first examines to what extent firms cooperate with external actors in the field of technological innovation, and if so, with what type of cooperation partner, paying special attention to the differentiation according to the size of the firms. Second, it aims to study how the firm’s size may affect not only the decision of cooperating but also with which type of partner.

The data in this study came from the surveys done in 2010 and 2013 by the Technological Innovation Panel (PITEC) for firms in the automotive industry. The paper estimates a bivariate probit model that takes into account the two types of cooperation mostly present in such an industry, vertical and institutional, explicitly considering the interdependencies that may arise in their simultaneous choice.

The empirical study confirms that small firms cooperate less frequently than big firms and that giving more importance to information publicly available and having public financial support from local and national governments are important determinants of collaboration agreements, mainly in the case of customers and suppliers.

This paper contributes to the understanding of the motivations of the automotive industry for engaging in R&D cooperation agreements. The authors study how the firm’s size may affect not only the decision of cooperating but also with which type of partner.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the internationalization of Chinese new global players through innovation-oriented Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As).

The paper combines the analysis of East-Asian and Chinese multinationals’ international expansion within international business (IB) and innovation domains, with the “latecomer” perspective. It is a conceptual contribution, based on the role of local institutions and firm’s absorptive capacity. A theoretical framework is developed, and further elucidated with two illustrative cases of Chinese M&As abroad in the automotive sector. Implications for theoretical development and practical application are then drawn.

Chinese firms’ M&As abroad have become one of the preferential modes of developing innovation capabilities. The success of these endeavors is argued to be the result of a combination of a strong push from government industrial policies, along with significant internal knowledge assimilation and transformation capabilities.

The paper extends IB literature integrating the latecomer firms’ perspective within a novel conceptual framework, which adds to the traditional resource-based arguments about incumbent MNEs asset and knowledge-seeking internationalization modes, as well as institutional and multi-dimensional absorptive capacity perspectives.

Roofing system needs no vapour barrier. Savings in construction and maintenance costs and resistance to wind uplift and corrosion are the benefits of a new insulation system for steel roofs.

The Process Technology Group of the Chemical Society have recently set up a Research Fellowship to investigate the rheological problems encountered by industry when dealing with dispersions; in particular the prediction of their properties from a knowledge of the nature of the continuous and disperse phases, especially the physical chemistry of the particle‐particle interactions. Together with this main interest, three subsidiary topics will be studied:

Building a new vehicle paint plant is a major task in any situation. When construction has to take place in parallel with the destruction of the old plant while still maintaining a level of production, the job becomes monumental. Planning has to be precise and execution clinical if target dates and budget costs are to be met.