Search results

Innovation, the successful exploitation of new ideas, is an important driver of economic growth. The traditional view of innovation as a pipeline process based around commercialising scientific or technological invention has today been replaced by a broader understanding that innovation is not necessarily linear and reaches far beyond the production of products to be focused on successful market outcomes. Based on the authors' experience of innovation policy development in Scotland, this paper concludes that there needs to be a dramatic change in approach to innovation policy if Scotland is to sustain long-term economic growth and competitive advantage.

Can standard business cycle methodology be applied to China? In this chapter, we address this question by examining the macroeconomic time series and identifying dimensions in which China differs from economies (such as Canada and the United States) that are typically the subject of business cycle research. We show that naively applying the standard business cycle tools to China is no more ridiculous than applying it to Canada, although the dimensions along which the model struggles is different. For China, the model cannot account for the low level of consumption (or high saving) as a proportion of income observed in the data. An examination of provincial level consumption data suggests that the absence of channels for intranational consumption risk sharing may be an important reason why the business cycle model has trouble accounting for Chinese consumption and saving behavior.

The purpose of this article is to present an inside look at the history of a little‐known but interesting initiative in the marketing field, one that involved the infusion of marketing thought into public policy decision‐making in the USA. It aims to trace the interesting tale of how marketing academics came to be included in the activities of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) through the FTC's “Marketing Academic Consultancy Program” (MACP) during the 1970s. This story also aims to include descriptions of the contributions made by those marketing academics and how those scholars were later phased out of the FTC.

An autobiographical approach is used since each of the authors was personally involved in the MACP. As participants in the program and as scholars whose careers were thereafter tremendously affected by that participation, these personal accounts provide considerable insight into the impact on both FTC operations and on marketing academic thought itself.

Over the decade of the 1970s some 30 marketing academics participated in this program, with considerable impact on both FTC operations and on marketing academic thought itself. Reflecting positive impact within public policy, for example, was a massive increase in the FTC budget for marketing and consumer research activities – from essentially zero at the start of the program to some $ 1 million in 1978. Benefits also flowed back into academia, as this program formed a prime basis for the development of today's “Marketing and Society” research area.

Although there are histories of the FTC, this is an original, first‐hand account of a little‐known era during which marketing academics and public policy decision‐makers were given a unique opportunity to work together and learn from each other. It offers personal insights into the workings of this innovative program and the benefits that accrued for both the FTC and for the marketing discipline.

To review a number of open source XML applications and systems including editors, validators, native XML databases, and publishing systems; to describe how some of these tools have been combined by the author to create a specific system, for a specific need.

An overview of XML is provided, a number of open source XML applications/systems are reviewed, and a system created by the author using some of these tools is described.

The open source tools for working with XML are maturing, and they provide the means for the library profession to easily publish library content on the internet, using open standards.

XML provides an agreed upon way of turning data into information. The result is non‐proprietary and application independent. Open source software operates under similar principles. An understanding and combination of these technologies can assist the library profession in meeting its goals in this era of globally networked computers and changing user expectations.

This paper aims to describe how data were used to design and evaluate new services at Notre Dame and how data were used to evaluate changes in user behavior at Emory University.

Each library (Emory, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Notre Dame) describe sources, methods and applications of data, gathered through a variety of sources to plan and evaluate new services and user satisfaction.

There is no one perfect approach to data-informed decision making; every approach has advantages, costs and disadvantages. What is important is that resource sharing practitioners become comfortable with a variety of assessment tools.

The user experience is increasingly recognized as a critical part of any service or library product but most resource sharing practitioners have little to no background in assessment and statistics. This article provides an introduction to methods, sources and applications of data specifically applied to interlibrary loans.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate the programme of philanthropy arising from the work of the Shirley Foundation, with particular reference to its impact in addressing issues related to autism.

The paper is based on the 2017 evaluation of The Shirley Foundation 1996–2016 by Aperio Group (Europe) Limited entitled 20 Years of Grant Making Autism and Information Technology: An Overview of The Foundation’s Impact (Pepin, 2017). The evaluation included interviews with Dame Stephanie Shirley CH (the Foundation’s founder), a documentation review and a survey of key grantees.

The evaluation concluded that the funding achieved both grantee purposes and those of The Shirley Foundation. The projects funded generally produced outcomes that made a difference and grant-making and monitoring processes were regarded, on the whole, as efficient.

The evaluation demonstrates the value of an innovative, catalytic, social entrepreneurial approach to funding to achieve impact.