Search results

The competence-based management approach has shed light on how firms represent open systems that link assets, strategic logic, and capabilities in order to create new competences. Nonetheless, we find that there are too few empirical studies that illustrate how competences are distributed within an industry. The following case study is based on an in-depth analysis of innovation and standards-formation in industrial automation. Two examples, the standard-setting community PROFIBUS and the field bus-related sensor consortium IO-Link are used to analyze partnership arrangements and competence-distribution patterns.

This study is based on qualitative interviews and it uses patent data to judge competences of a standard-setting community's partner firms. Referring to the empirical case of IO-Link, we show how the integrator firms’ competence-leveraging can be significantly affected by new technology approaches that reason a novel deployment of capabilities. It seems that the deployment of resources depends not only on industry segmentation, but also on the firms’ coordinated agenda concerning innovative, new functionality of a given standard. Our patent analysis also mirrors the variety of knowledge within a standard-setting community. Furthermore, we develop a concept of layered business systems, that is, a terminology of knowledge, organizational, and technology domains. Standard-setting communities bundle complementarity assets, they make their member firms create both proprietary and open technology, and they integrate knowledge across industry boundaries.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

This study explores the thematic relationships within the field of sustainability of agri-food chains oriented toward Industry 4.0, focusing on the analysis of scientific production, through research articles and technological output according to patents worldwide. Agri-food Industry 4.0 is an expanding interdisciplinary field in which science and technology interactions are increasingly intensifying with a strong link to sustainable development.

This study has used high impact indexed publications (Web of science) and patents as proxy indicators of innovation, which are transformed into two sets of data, reflecting the scientific and technical backgrounds, respectively. On the one hand, both quantitative and qualitative analysis methodologies were used to examine the scientific papers through descriptive analysis, focused on collaborations networks by authors, institutions, and countries, as well as a content analysis of keywords. On the other hand, the analysis of technical background on patent families shows the temporal evolution of technologies with future challenging trends, text mining, main applicants, and geographical examination.

The results show that in the field of sustainability in agri-food chains oriented to Industry 4.0, most research is in the agricultural field in scientific articles, with high impact in climate-smart agriculture. Patent analysis reveals a marked increase in the patenting rate from 2012 and 2013, coinciding with the start of scientific production in this field of knowledge. In spite of the fact that China is the leader country in this technological field, India shows a significant change. Moreover, India is a country that is currently showing significant progress, both in the field of scientific production and in its categorization as an innovative country due to its growth in patent filings.

This chapter focuses on public research as one possible external source of knowledge available for private companies seeking scientific support in relation to product development projects, and analyses inter-organizational relations between public research institutions and innovative firms including enabling conditions for effective knowledge creation in such public-private interactions. Two case studies of product development projects based on sensor technology are used to illuminate how innovation is carried out in such interactions. The chapter concludes with extracting crucial features for successful public-private collaboration on knowledge creation and innovation.

This study examines the effects of organizational attention on technological search in the multibusiness firm. We argue that attentional specialization and coupling, or (respectively) attention given to problems within and across units, affect a unit’s ability to engage in distant and local search by shaping how problems are perceived and addressed. We test this theory by applying a probabilistic topic model to all Motorola patents issued from 1974 to 1997, thus identifying and measuring attention to technical problems. Our results suggest that (a) subunits with specialized attention are not myopic but instead explore broadly and (b) tight attentional coupling across units increases the breadth of search. This study contributes to attention-based views of the firm and to studies on organizational design and search.

Geotechnologies have a long tradition in several areas of society and research. The recent development of the ‘Internet of Everything’ (IoE) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies opened several doors to the contribution of tourism. Emergent technologies contributions to tourism and planning such as web mapping, augmented reality (AR), crowdsourcing and crowdsensing are relatively recent, and there is a lack of research around their potential for Creative Tourism enhancement. For example, combining web mapping with AR or storytelling can be an excellent contribution to operators, planners and tourists. For research purposes, new opportunities are open, particularly by integrating community-shared data. It is well known for the popularity of social networks, the exponential growth of photo sharing, but few studies have been implemented to understand their contribution to research. This chapter focuses on emerging geotechnologies concerning cultural mapping, Creative Tourism and sustainability. Since it is a new growing niche, more research is needed to develop and understand the potential of new approaches. Besides traditional techniques such as quantitative (e.g. surveys) and qualitative ones (e.g. interviews, focus groups and world café), it revises the role of geotechnologies on Creative Tourism development and growing activities. Results from case studies from Europe are analysed.