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The purpose of this paper is to explore the intersection of accounting practices and new technologies in the age of agility as a form of intellectual capital, through sharing the conceptualization and real implications of accounting and accountability ideas in exploring and deploying new technologies, such as big data analytics, blockchain and augmented accounting practices and expounding how they constitute new forms of intellectual capital to support value creation and realise Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The adopted methodology is cyber-ethnography, which investigates online practices through observation and discourse analysis, reflecting on new business models and practices, and how accounting relates to these developments. The global brain sets the conceptual context, which reflects the distributed network intelligence that is created through the internet.

The main findings focus on various developments of accounting practice that reflect, utilise or support digital companies and new technologies, including augmentation, big data analytics and blockchain technology, as new forms of intellectual capital, that is knowledge and skills within organisations, that have the potential to support value creation and realise SDGs. These relate to and originate from the global brain, which constitutes the umbrella of tech-related intellectual capital.

This paper determines new developments in accounting practices in relation to new technologies, due to the continuous expansion and influence of the intelligence of the collective network, the global brain, as forms of intellectual capital, contributing to value creation, sustainable development and the realisation of SDGs.

The purpose of this article is to illustrate how the characteristics of complex product systems pose specific managerial challenges onto the transfer of new technology from technology development to product development.

The research relies on comparative case studies involving three cases of internal technology transfer processes in the development of electrical equipment and telecommunication systems.

The research findings suggest that managerial decisions on internal technology transfer should be guided by a contingency framework rather than general procedures and tools.

Since the research is restricted to a limited number of case studies, additional studies are required to validate the findings.

The study results indicate that in cases of complex product development, there is a need for a more integrated view on technology and product development, than what is commonly described in the literature.

This article complements previous studies of the management of internal technology transfer processes, which primarily have addressed mass producing industries.

Usage of internet and mobile phones has promoted and sometimes hindered various aspects of development bringing radical changes to Kenyan households in the last couple of years. The rapid spread of mobile phones, mobile broadband and internet usage at the household level has increased the potential of these technologies leading to development outcomes. This paper aims to focus on these issues.

The paper is based on primary data collected through two surveys and is part of ongoing PhD work. A rigorous methodology was designed and used to conduct the research. Starting with the research problem that outlined the key areas for the study, research objectives were developed following a background review of the study. The paper establishes the development outcomes associated with the rapid spread and usage of the internet and mobile phones and explores if the wide usage expands or shrinks the capabilities of the households.

The analysis indicates that a high value is attached to the new technologies and in particular mobile phones. It also reveals that the new technologies enabled some capabilities and hindered others leading to diverse development outcomes. Use of internet and mobile phones led to positive and negative development outcomes in low income households in Kenya. Households' choices were based on their perceptions of the role that the new technologies played in enhancing their quality of life. Internet access and usage was limited and restricted to urban areas while mobile phone usage was distributed across the country. However, increased use of mobile internet is expected to change the situation. The paper notes that the social, economic and knowledge status of individuals, coupled with the choices they make, determines the development outcomes derived from use of these technologies.

The paper makes recommendations for further research on the effects of new technologies on quality of life.

The paper examines the extent to which usage of the internet and mobile phones enhances or hinders households' capability to achieve development in social, economic and knowledge dimensions.

The technological revolution is creating new goods and services and altering how and where they are produced. One of the principal issues for all countries is how these new technologies will affect employment and the composition of skills demand. Surveys the literature to attempt to answer three main questions: to what degree are the new technologies becoming diffused around the world? How much do they reduce, or increase employment? And do they reduce, or increase, the skills required in the labour force? Touches briefly on implications for educational policy. The survey suggests that because of new technologies, new organizations of production, changing employment conditions and the development of new sectors of production, the complementarity of general, formal schooling, in‐plant training and learning‐by‐doing to capital investment are increasing over time and that general schooling plus on‐the‐job training is more complementary to new technologies than is vocational schooling. The former combination is more likely to give workers the flexibility they need in such changing conditions.

Do librarians feel that it is important to keep up to date with new developments in technology? What means do they use to find out about these new developments, and how effective are those means? These and related issues are considered in this article, in which the authors report on a small‐scale survey of librarians in Western Australia, carried out in 1989. The results suggest that, while the librarians have a strong belief that it is important to keep up to date with information on new technology, they generally adopt the common strategy of simply using readily‐available sources of information.

In socio-technical transition theory, resistance by existing technology and regime resistance plays a key role. The resistance is in the form of intentional improvements; eventually, the regime destabilizes and adopts the new technology, referred to as the sailing-ship effect. Researchers used a structural view and examined it as a strategic action and its relationship with new technology (competitive/symbiotic) in non-fast-changing sailing systems. This study uses a microlevel view and examines it in a fast-changing where products/services are developed by integrating existing technology with new product innovations; their success depends on addressing technical/market uncertainty. This study examines the sailing-ship effect in a fast-changing system and contributes to the socio-technical transition theory.

The authors need to examine the phenomena of the sailing-ship effect in its setting, and a case-study method is appropriate. The selected case provided diverse analytic and heuristic perspectives to examine the phenomena; therefore, it was a single case study.

In an IT scenario, the strategic actions decide and realize agility and competitive advantage by formulating appropriate goals with required budgets and coevolutionary changes to resources at product, process and organizational levels, addressing technical/market uncertainty. Moreover, the agility displayed by strategic actions determines the relationship with new technology, which is interspersed. Finally, it provided insights into struggle, navigation and negotiations, forming strategic actions to display the sailing-ship effect.

The study selected a Banking Financial Services and Insurance product of an IT Services company. As start-ups exhibit inherent (emergent) agility, the authors can examine agility as a combination of emergent and strategic actions by selecting a start-up.

The study highlights the strategic actions specific to an IT services company. It developed its product and services by steering clear from IT innovations such as native cloud and continuous deployment. It improved its products/services with necessary organizational changes and achieved the desired agility and competitive advantage. Therefore, organizations devise appropriate strategic actions to combat the sailing-ship effect apart from setting goals and selecting IT innovations.

The study expands the socio-technical transition theory by selecting a fast-changing system. It provided insights into the relationship between existing and new technology and the strategic actions necessary to manage technical and market uncertainty and achieve the desired competitive advantage, or the sailing-ship effect.

The aim of this paper is to explore the identification of innovative customers and the effectiveness of employing such customers to generate new service ideas in a technology‐based service setting.

The first study reported here employs the “technology readiness” (TR) construct and involves telephone surveys with randomly selected Swedish consumers. The second involves a field experiment.

Findings from Study I suggest that the TR is a useful tool for identifying users who exhibit both innovative attitudes and behaviors. The results from Study II show that users with a high TR are highly creative as reflected by the quantity and quality of new service ideas.

The sample size for Study II was relatively small and making empirical generalizations with confidence should await results from studies involving larger samples. However, in sum the research demonstrates that TR appears to be an effective tool for identifying innovative customers who would be both willing to participate in new service development and capable of generating creative ideas.

Service businesses interested in using customers to help generate new ideas could benefit from this research.

This paper aims to investigate how the relationships among the different actors within the business networks affect the evolution of innovation along the different steps of technology life cycle.

The study is supported by a longitudinal case study referred to a mechanical company operating in the knitting machineries industry. A triangulation method integrating multiple data sources in a multiple method design was used to gather data.

The longitudinal study supports the idea that interactions among the actors within the business networks heavily influence the technology evolution.

Although the longitudinal case study reported in this paper refers to a period of time of about 10 years, our findings refer only to a single case study in a specific sector and so they cannot be generalized.

This paper provides important guidelines on how to manage the relationships emerging within a business network to influence the new technologies development.

The paper contributes to business networks literature, filling the gaps about how the relationships among the actors involved in a network can evolve over time and influence the evolution of technology in itself.

Many new products are based on new technologies, which may in turn be based on new scientific discoveries. The extant literature on new product development has focused on how a firm may successfully commercialize new products. There is a corporate cost associated with new product failure, which extends beyond the final product‐manufacturing corporation to all the parties involved in the supply chain for the failed product. The new product development community has developed frameworks for managing the new product development process to minimize new product failure, notably by incorporating customer preferences into a cross‐functional approach to new product design and by creating a set of decision points or stage gates. The focus of these has been on the latter stages of the new product development process. Besides corporate decisions, society and its various institutions play a role in the shaping of new products from knowledge discoveries. Identifies how other participants may indeed influence the development of new products. Permits a more deliberate understanding of the possible impact of aiding or preventing a movement up the development hierarchy and so a clearer understanding of the potential benefits and opportunity costs may arise.

The purpose of this paper is to capture the collective understanding of digital transformation (DT) across Swiss businesses and establish a reference framework based on the strategic action field (SAF) theory.

A number of Swiss associations provided their databases for an online survey. The large sample includes 2,590 participants from 1,854 organisations and delivered over 4,200 descriptions of DT, categorised into seven SAFs. A cross tabulation of SAF combinations by firm size identified 127 possible SAF combinations which constitute the common understanding of DT.

The data set allowed the identification of SAFs and the conceptualisation of DT based on a shared understanding. Drivers of digital transformation are: process engineering, new technologies and digital business development, supported by digital leadership and culture, the cloud and data, customer centricity and digital marketing.

For practitioners, the study provides the SAFs that should be considered for DT strategies. For academic scholars, a unique data set has allowed the study of DT by analysing action field combinations, revealing a nuanced constellation of SAFs. Limitations are the focus on Swiss organisations and a convenience sample for collecting the analysed data.

For the first time, the shared understanding of DT in Swiss businesses – based on SAFs – has allowed a conceptualisation of DT in order to provide guidance to businesses managers and employees.