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The chapter explores project management in action in a large public research organisation – NLAT – which decided to change its internal organisation from team- to project-based organisation a few years ago. Because they focus on the realisation of a particular set of tasks for a specific client, project management practices are oriented towards optimising the process of providing clients with answers and solutions. Based on a systematic and comparative analysis of eight NLAT projects, the chapter reports technological success as project achievements, but at the same time the systematic violation of project management principles. Three elements have been identified as enhancing learning, cumulated knowledge and competencies: low project core staffing levels, which lead to the circulation of engineers and researchers around different projects; the building and managing of thematic projects and the encouragement of ‘bricolage’ as a project management style.

Rather than organize as traditional firms, many of today’s companies organize as platforms that sit at the nexus of multiple exchange and production relationships. This chapter considers a most basic question of organization in platform contexts: the choice of boundaries. Herein, I investigate how classical economic theories of firm boundaries apply to platform-based organization and empirically study how executives made boundary choices in response to changing market and technical challenges in the early mobile computing industry (the predecessor to today’s smartphones). Rather than a strict or unavoidable tradeoff between “openness-versus-control,” most successful platform owners chose their boundaries in a way to simultaneously open-up to outside developers while maintaining coordination across the entire system.

Purpose: This chapter aims to study the modelling of conflict in the labour market in the conditions of automatization based on robots, Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) from the position of countries’ inequality and conflict management.

Design/Methodology/Approach: It is determined that scientific literature has not formed the sufficient scientific and practical basis for determining the level of technological inequality of countries in the labour market in the conditions of automatization based on robots, Big Data and AI. The research objects are countries with the highest level of technological inequality from the position of automatization based on robots, Big Data and AI.

Findings: This chapter performs an overview of the factors of technological inequality of countries, which leads to the global conflict on the labour market in the conditions of automatization based on robots, Big Data and AI. It is supposed that using the technology and methods of the system of engineering knowledge within conflict management it is possible to find a non-standard solution, which ensures better optimization. A complex technical method proves its rationality and opens the perspectives for further development of the methodology and integration of the systems of knowledge on conflict management; still, from the position of conflict in the labour market in the conditions of automatization, there are not enough means of conflict management that could neutralize or partially solve such global conflict.

Originality/Value: It is proved that full automatization is a price paid by humans for prospering, while it is expected that new technologies will increase productivity and income. This will lead to the dismissal of certain employees and bankruptcy of the existing companies and productions, which is not that important for many large employers. For most employees, this is a conflict against the background of automatization, which leads to worse consequences for them.

Given the growth in use of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) in reproductive medicine, most fertility clinics have developed websites describing the benefits of PGD. This chapter examines the media frames employed on 372 U.S. fertility clinic websites marketing PGD to consumers and how these frames promote biomedicalization.

Evaluation of website discourse was conducted with the use of frame analysis, a research methodology for examining the way media frames bind together claims, judgments, and value statements into a narrative that guides readers’ interpretation of an issue.

Findings show that website discourse frames PGD in terms of the attainment of reproductive normality, the management of reproductive risk, and the achievement of technological progress. These discursive frames contribute to the ongoing biomedicalization of reproduction by re-naturalizing conception as a choice rather than a natural fact, by promoting preoccupation with biomedical risk, and by affirming new forms of technological power and expertise.

Examination reveals the ways in which PGD has developed its own system of representations, notions of exchange, and epistemic forms, and highlights the important ethical issues leveraged on fertility clinic websites marketing PGD.

As one of the first attempts to systematically analyze media frames that depict PGD on fertility clinic websites, this study contributes to medical sociology by advancing theoretical and empirical understanding of the media processes shaping accounts of reproductive technologies. Findings also provide a foundation for further analysis of the social norms and bioethical standards arising from consumer marketing of reproductive technologies.

Technological development from horse-drawn carriages to the new Airbus A380 has led to a remarkable increase in both the capacity and speed of tourist travel. This development has an endogenous systemic cause and will continue to increase carbon dioxide emissions/energy consumption if left unchecked. Another stream of technological research and development aims at reducing pollution and will reduce emissions per passenger-kilometer, but suffers from several rebound effects. The final impact on energy consumption depends on the strength of the positive and negative feedback in the technology system of tourism transport. However, as the core tourism industry including tour operators, travel agencies, and, accommodation has a strong link with air transport, it is unlikely that technological development without strong social and political control will result in delivering the emission reductions required for avoiding dangerous climate change.

This opening chapter sets the context for the following chapters by first providing a working definition of innovation. This definition distinguishes innovation from invention based on the fundamental principles of novelty and value creation. Importantly, value is introduced in the context of diverse impact rather than in the limited context of monetary worth. Furthermore, innovation is initially framed according to various forms, which include product and processes, and various degrees of impact, which range from radical disruption to incremental change. By distinguishing innovation from invention and outlining the diversity of innovative principles, this chapter provides a platform from which to explore innovation beyond the conventional focus on market-based practices within the scientific and technological domains.

This second chapter provides a useful backdrop for understanding innovation beyond the conventional focus on mainstream technology and science by detailing the conceptual underpinnings of cultural innovation. First, the challenges of objectively assessing the worth of novel work in the various fields of art and architecture are explored through the philosophical views of beauty. Second, the strategies and models deployed over time by artists, patrons, and experts to characterize the merits of novelty in the creative fields are reviewed. Third, the economic principles that have been used to frame the value propositions associated with cultural innovations as articulated by cultural economists are explored.

In this paper we appraise the ways in which use of closed-system proprietary product architectures versus open-system modular product architectures is likely to influence the dynamics and trajectory of new product market formation. We compare the evolutions of new markets in China for gas-powered two-wheeled vehicles (G2WVs) based (initially) on closed-system proprietary architectures and for electric-powered two-wheeled vehicles (E2WVs) based on open-system modular architectures. We draw on this comparison to suggest ways in which the use of the two different kinds of architectures as the basis for new kinds of products may result in very different patterns and speeds of new market formation. We then suggest some key implications of the different dynamics of market formation associated with open-system modular architectures for both the competence-based strategic management (CBSM) of firms and for technology and economic development policies of governments.

Specifically, we suggest how the use of open-system modular product architectures as the basis for new products is likely to result in dynamics of new market formation that call for new approaches to the strategic management of innovation and product creation. We also suggest technology and economic development policies favoring use of open-system modular architectures may stimulate new market formation and related economic development by providing platforms for accelerating technology development and dissemination, facilitating the formation of an industrial base of assemblers and component suppliers, assisting new firms in building customer relationships, enabling more geographically diffused economic development within countries, and facilitating development of export markets. We also suggest directions for further research into the potential for open-system modular product architectures to enable bottom-of-the-pyramid innovation processes, frugal engineering in developing economies, and development of low-cost product variations more generally.