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Real strategy innovation comes from solving problems for customers in new ways.

The new century promises to bring more change, more complexity, and more competition. As a result, enterprisewide innovation will become a required operational discipline. Managing innovation in this environment involves four key principles: the approach must be comprehensive; innovation must include an organized, systematic, and continual search for new opportunities; organizations must involve everyone in the innovation process; a company must work constantly on improving its climate for innovation.

When it comes to Innovation, there are few certainties. However, two factors that are increasingly accepted, are that innovation is vital for business growth, but that the innovation process in most companies is poor.

In the context of organizational change, identifying, and organizing the various roles of change agents remains a challenge for practitioners and scholars alike. This chapter examines how different agents can enable an effective change process. Empirical evidence from three hospitals illustrates the process of transformation and its underlying arrangements to identify agents and their roles. The findings underline the importance of designing a coherent system of agents, determining where they come from, their role during the process, and how this may change throughout the change process. Managerial choices in the cases are discussed, leading to implications for theory and practice.

The proliferation of various interpretations of the marketing concept suggests a lack of unanimity as to its meaning. This article outlines five definitional “schools” of the marketing concept.

The purpose of this article is expository in the main; critical to a lesser degree. It will attempt to show how Karl Marx, enraged by the imperfections and inhumanity of the capitalist society, “fought” for its supersession by the communist society on which he dwelt so fondly, that society which would emerge from the womb of a dying capitalism. It asks such questions as these: Is it possible to create the truly human society envisaged by Marx? Is perfection of man and society a mere will‐o'‐the‐wisp? A brief analysis, therefore, of the imperfections of capitalism is undertaken for the purpose of revealing the evils which Marx sought to eliminate by revolution of the most violent sort. In this sense, the nature of man under capitalism is analysed. Marx found the breed wanting, in a word, dehumanised. An attempt is, therefore, made to discuss the new man of Marxism, man's own creation, and the traits of that new man, one freed at last from the alienating effects of private property, division of labour, money, and religion. Another question that springs to mind is this: how does Marx propose to transcend alienation?

For additive manufacturing (AM) through laser-based powder bed fusion of polymers (PBF-LB/P), accurate characterization of powder flowability is vital for achieving high-quality parts. However, accurately characterizing feedstock flowability presents challenges because of a lack of consensus on which tests to perform and the diverse forces and mechanisms involved. This study aims to undertake a thorough investigation into the flowability of eight feedstock materials for PBF-LB/P at different temperatures using various techniques.

For ambient temperature assessments, established metrics such as avalanche angle and Hausner ratio, along with the approximated flow function coefficient (FFC_app), are used. The study then focuses on the influence of elevated temperatures representative of in-process conditions. FFC_app and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) are performed and analyzed, followed by a correlation analysis as a holistic approach to identify key aspects for flowability. Furthermore, two feedstock materials are compared with a previous study to connect the present findings to PBF-LB/P processing.

The study revealed intrinsic material properties such as mechanical softening near the melting point to become significant. This partially explains why certain powders with poor ambient temperature flowability are consistently demonstrated to produce high-quality parts. FFC_app and thermal characterization through DSC are identified as critical metrics for optimizing feedstock material characteristics across temperature ranges.

Previous studies emphasized specific characterizations of feedstock material at ambient temperature, presented a limited materials selection or focused on metrics such as shape factors. In contrast, this study addresses a partially understood aspect by examining the critical role of temperature in governing feedstock material flowability. It advocates for the inclusion of temperature variables in flowability analyses to closely resemble the PBF-LB/P process, which can be applied to material design, selection and process optimization.