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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.

Purpose – To consider the emerging qualitative approaches that consider the future, exploring ways in which these may be better used to complement and extend established practice in global climate models.

Methodology/approach – A review of contemporary modelling approaches that consider the future for transport applications, with a focus on complexity and uncertainty issues, the search for foresight, the role of engagement and the credibility of qualitative foresight.

Findings – The importance of the need to incorporate socio-economic scenarios in climate change models and the possibilities offered by the tool of systematic qualitative foresight are demonstrated.

Originality/value – Explores limitations of quantitative modelling approaches to foresight and introduces a potentially complementary, innovative approach based on the systematic use of qualitative methodologies.

A series of research experiences provoked this paper. In the spring of 2003, I was asked to act as an assessor, for the Island of Ireland Seed Corn competition¹. There I came across academic start-ups (ASUs), directly linked to Irish public sector science and technology (S&T) funding. Several of the competition teams consisted of young scientists, who presented business plans. Probing demonstrated that the teams appeared to possess little understanding of the business concepts these contained. Another consistent finding was that any market reference made was focused on multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries already located in the country. Intrigued by this, together with a colleague, we then began looking at ASUs, university-based funded S&T research centres and the activities of the newly created Science Foundation of Ireland (SFI).²

Biotechnology is now considered a key emerging sector in Ireland's economic landscape. Defined as the ‘application of scientific and engineering principles to the processing of materials by biological agents’ (Forfás Report, 2005), biotechnology is now the main high-technology driver affecting industries as diverse as food, agriculture human health and environmental protection. In 2002 it was estimated that over 400,000 people worldwide were employed in biotech (InterTradeIreland, 2002), with the market for biotechnology products worth an estimated 100 billion (European Commission, 2002). However, according to the Technology Foresight Ireland Report (1999), these figures are predicted to increase significantly, with the expectation that, by the end of 2006, the biotechnology sector will be worth an estimated 250 billion and will employ more than three million workers.

Scenarios are cognitive aids for thinking about the future in a sustained and disciplined manner. Because scenarios must be facilitated, scenarios must be considered in the context of their practice. In the strategic management literature, there has been a considerable conversation on the practical difference between “hot” and “cold” cognition. Thinking in this conventional literature demonstrates how the facilitators of scenario planning workshops establish and channel the productive cognition of their clients away from hot cognition and toward cold cognition. But how? As a thought experiment, we examine whether the sociological concept of “emotional labor” helps explain the cognition management of clients by facilitators during scenario planning. We end by considering how a deeper practical understanding of emotional labor might help facilitators identify mechanisms and adapt their tools to better manage the cognitive-affective dimensions of scenario planning in practice.

The aim of this review is to reflect the current state of Financial Technology (FinTech) research along with its journey of development. Further, a conceptual framework showing the interaction of independent, mediating, and moderating variables with dependent variables (acceptance of FinTech products and services) along with propositions is prepared to facilitate the future researchers. This systematic literature review consists of 110 articles from 78 journals indexed in two academic databases (Scopus and/or Web of Science), extracting facts and figures about FinTech during 2016–2021. Our findings contribute to the literature by exemplifying that FinTech is a mixed set of threats and opportunities. In the present review only 18 articles belong to 2016–2017 but 54 articles are considered from 2020–2021, the increasing number of FinTech articles in high-ranking journals indicate the speedily growing popularity of FinTech. Similarly, secondary data based articles are dominating the primary data based ones. Further, regression analysis and PLS-SEM are the most popular statistical techniques among the authors of FinTech articles. To the best of knowledge of the authors, this is a unique study in which the latest FinTech research findings are skimmed.