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The purpose of this paper is to introduce a reverted way to design electrical machines. The authors present a work flow that systematically yields electrical machine geometries from given air gap fields.

The solution process exploits the inverse Cauchy problem. The desired air gap field is inserted to this as the Cauchy data, and the solution process is stabilized with the aid of linear algebra.

The results are verified by solving backwards the air gap fields in the standard way. They match well with the air gap fields inserted as an input to the system.

The paper reverts the standard design work flow of electrical motor by solving directly for a geometry that yields the desired air gap field. In addition, a stabilization strategy for the underlying Cauchy problem is introduced.

In addition to pioneering, empirical work on entry order increasingly addresses fast followers and laggards and the potential advantages they are able to capture. There is also a growing consensus in the academia, that current measures of firm performance used in the entry order literature to study these advantages are inadequate. This study analyzes the relationship between entry order and customer evaluations, which, depicting the performance of the firm's products in the market, are used as a proxy for firm performance.

The study is set in the digital camera industry, analyzing entries into each new technology level, in terms of the sensor resolution of compact and bridge cameras. The complete dataset consisted of 1,816 digital camera models introduced between January 1996 and December 2017. The data are analyzed using hierarchical multiple linear regression.

The study finds evidence of early-mover advantage for the compact product category. In the compact camera consumer market, both first-movers and fast followers outperform late movers. Furthermore, the difference in performance in comparison to laggards is greater for first-movers than for fast followers. However, in the bridge category which consists of a more heterogeneous set of products, no significant entry-order effects are detected.

The results clearly indicate that there exists an early mover advantage. Furthermore, the results are not consistent across different product categories within an industry; hence, caution needs to be exercised when analyzing industry dynamics and entry order effects. Finally, our novel conceptualization of firm performance measured as online customer evaluation add new opportunities to investigate firm success

The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance effects of brand identity in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The authors examine whether brand identity mediates the relationship between brand orientation and brand performance, and further, whether brand performance leads to better financial performance. The authors also study whether these performance effects are moderated by customer type and industry type. Differing from earlier research, this study analyzes brand identity through its constituent components: brand values, brand vision and brand positioning. The data include altogether 721 effective responses from Finnish SMEs. Structural equation modeling is used for testing the research hypotheses.

Brand positioning and brand vision have a direct positive effect on brand performance, which in turn, positively affects financial performance. Brand orientation drives the components of brand identity. Importantly, there is variation in some of the relationships between brand orientation, brand values, brand vision and brand positioning across business-to-business firms and business-to-customer firms, and across firms in service industries and in production industries.

The research is based on a single-country sample. Including additional factors for the model with the potential to moderate the described relationships is also called for. Future research could also consider new potential brand identity components currently not addressed in the paper.

This paper contributes to the literature by increasing the knowledge of SME branding.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the perceived trustworthiness of a B2B service provider relates to a business customer’s intention to use digital services from that provider. The study investigates whether perceived trustworthiness, composed of ability, integrity and benevolence, explains behavioral intentions equally among all business customer segments, and how characteristics such as job level, decision-making role, technology readiness age and gender moderate these effects.

Drawing on a model of trust transfer mechanism, the study explores how perceived trustworthiness established in face-to-face interaction influences the use of digital services in making B2B purchases. Hypotheses are tested using a sample of 1,866 responses collected from customers of four B2B firms.

Ability is the most influential on the customer’s intention to transact through digital channels, while the effects of integrity and benevolence show more variation. The effect of perceived trustworthiness on the intention to use digital services is remarkably stronger among senior and middle management, high-level decision makers, the younger age segment, men and individuals high in technology readiness, compared to other segments studied.

The study contributes to the scant research on B2B customer behavior in the digital environment and incorporates individual characteristics specific to the industrial domain.

There is a growing need for measures assessing technological changes in systemic contexts as business ecosystems replace standalone products. In these ecosystem contexts, organizations are required to manage their innovation processes in increasingly networked and complex environments. In this paper, we introduce the technology and ecosystem clockspeed measures that can be used to assess the temporal nature of technological changes in a business ecosystem. We analyze systemic changes in the personal computer (PC) ecosystem, explicitly focusing on subindustries central to the delivery of PC gaming value to the end user. Our results show that the time-based intensity of technological competition in intertwined subindustries of a business ecosystem may follow various trajectories during the evolution of the ecosystem. Hence, the technology and ecosystem clockspeed measures are able to pinpoint alternating dynamics in technological changes among the subindustries in the business ecosystem. We subsequently discuss organizational considerations and theoretical implications of the proposed measures.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between brand orientation and business growth in business-to-business (B2B) small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The authors also explore whether this relationship is moderated by internal firm-related factors (firm age, firm size) and/or external market-related factors (market life cycle, industry type).

The authors develop and empirically test a conceptual model using data from 396 B2B SMEs operating in Finland. Structural equation modeling is used for testing the research hypotheses.

Brand orientation contributes to business growth via two indirect paths, the first one going through brand performance and the second one going through brand performance and customer relationship performance. However, although the effects are positive, the results reveal that the regression coefficients are relatively small, implying only a limited impact of brand orientation on growth among B2B SMEs. The results further suggest that firm age, firm size and industry type moderate the brand performance–business growth relationship, whereas market life cycle moderates the effect of brand orientation on brand performance.

Future research could extend this study by examining brand orientation in industrial markets simultaneously with alternative strategic orientations, such as market, technology and innovation orientation. New moderator variables should also be considered, such as market or technological turbulence. Furthermore, given that this study uses a cross-sectional data set, it is recommended that future research should attempt to test the model using longitudinal data sets.

B2B SMEs are able to gain business growth through developing a strong brand. However, brand orientation per se appears to be of limited relevance for such an endeavor. Consequently, managers of small industrial firms should consider brand orientation only with, and in comparison to, alternative strategic orientations.

Brand orientation has been very rarely examined from the perspective of B2B firms or that of SMEs. Interestingly, the findings indicate that the performance benefits of brand orientation seem to be smaller among B2B SMEs than what earlier research would imply. The analysis of moderation effects offers additional insights into whether there are differences between industrial SMEs as to the relevance of brand orientation.

The authors aim to search for a practical and accurate way to get good loss estimates for coil filaments in electrical machines, for example transformers. At the moment including loss estimations into standard finite element computations is prohibitively expensive for large coils.

A low-dimensional function space for finite element method (FEM) is introduced on the filament-air interface and then extended into the filament to significantly reduce the number of unknowns per filament. Careful choice of these extensions enables good loss estimate accuracy. The result is a system matrix assembly block that can be used verbatim for all filaments, further reducing the cost. Both net current and voltage per length of the filament are readily available in the problem formulation.

The loss estimates from the developed model agree well with traditional FEM and the computation times are faster.

To produce accurate loss estimates in large coils, the low-dimensional function space is constricted on the filament boundaries. The proposed method enables electrical engineers to compute the ohmic losses of individual conductors.

Creating organisational resilience and creating a positive social impact is becoming a condition for sustainable business development. The adoption of digital technologies requires specific leadership characteristics to resolve complex societal challenges. The purpose of the research is to identify the critical strategic leadership characteristics for developing organisational resilience while creating social- and financial value. There is a research gap in strategic leadership, digital technologies, social impact, and organisational resilience studies which will be addressed in this research. The methodology embeds a critical literature review, complemented by bibliometric analysis. The adoption of digital technology is seen to be a key driver in the societal question and a tool to boost organisational resilience. Sensing, seizing, and driving digital adoption agenda as well as digital adoption are critical and require unique leadership characteristics where contextual ambidexterity was key to the strategic leader when building organisational resilience and creating social- and financial value. The research results can be used for identifying which characteristics strategic leaders must develop for digital technology adaptation to generate both a profit and positive social impact while boosting organisational resilience.

Finite element‐based PDE solver software systems are typically method‐driven. The user has to supply the data in a particular form required by a numerical method. The method refuses to start if the data is in incorrect format, and breaks down if correctly formatted data is insufficient or inconsistent. However, software can be made more flexible with data‐driven approach. The decisions on existence and uniqueness of the solution, as well as the choice of suitable computing methods are based on the data. This calls for a new stage of data processing for a solver, which is not essentially an expert system. The questions are formalizable and their solution must be based on efficient and robust computational techniques. We present an elementary computational technique for automatic treatment of topological problems arising from potential theory, boundary condition inspection, and coupled problems. The approach is based on computing Smith normal form of the non‐oriented boundary operator matrices, whose elements are from the ring N mod 2, i.e. only 0s and 1s, instead of the integers. This approach obviates the problems of excessive computation time and risk of overflow in integer computations.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the influence of national cultural dimensions on the evolution of national innovation adoption over time. The paper considers the moderating effects of national wealth, population density and illiteracy rate on the role of cultural dimensions in the timing of innovation takeoff in national markets.

The empirical study investigates 137 national innovation adoption time series; the dependent variable being the time it takes for innovation adoption to take off. The independent variables are Hofstede's five cultural dimensions and the moderating variables are gross domestic product (GDP), population density and illiteracy rate.

The outcome of the study shows that cultural dimensions have a greater influence on takeoff time in countries with highly developed economies, dense populations and low illiteracy rates. The study also shows that especially the cultural dimension of individualism has a significant context independent influence on takeoff dynamics, whereas masculinity has no such effect.

The paper provides evidence that the influence of cultural dimensions may be more complex than previously believed. Contribution of the research to the academic community especially lies in results regarding moderation effect of GDP, population density and illiteracy. Other independent and moderating variables could provide useful subjects for further research.

The results of this study could assist companies conducting business in cross‐national settings in planning their international operations in such areas as designing marketing promotions and deciding the entry order into national markets. Especially, useful the results are in pre‐takeoff phase of the evolution of innovation adoption.

The paper extends our understanding of the relationship between the national cultural dimensions and the early evolution of innovation adoption. Incomplete understanding of the cross‐national dynamics of the innovation adoption takeoff is scrutinized and the findings support earlier research that cultural dimensions affect adoption dynamics. The study demonstrates that the influence of cultural dimensions may be dependent on and moderated by other national attributes.