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WHEN A biography of Dante Gabriel Rossetti was returned to Kendal library by post from Oxford University with a stamp on the date label of 5 Feb 1916 no one considered this to be very startling news. There was a compliment slip inside apologising for the delay (‘It was lurking in one of our darker corners’). I sent them a brief note thanking them, and that I thought was that.

Jeff Hotchkiss, President of the Assembly Test Division of Teradyne, Inc., the largest electronics testing company in the world, returned to the corporation where he had built his career after a three-year hiatus as CEO of a VOIP start-up. Teradyne's operation was struggling through the effects of a bad economy coupled with significant downturns in the electronics industry, and Hotchkiss encountered numerous problems specifically in the China operation, including customer dissatisfaction with service, price, and time required to implement changes. He assembled a strategic team to address these issues and to recommend and implement an accelerated turnaround in China. Students are challenged to design the turnaround plan.

The purpose of this paper is to provide explicit thinking about the organizational elements that support or hinder innovation in the government sector as it increasingly faces demand for innovative solutions to policy areas. The paper aims to present the development and findings of an evaluative case method conducted for an Australian state government department's organizational innovation program.

The evaluative case study was developed and conducted in two phases. First, an intellectual capital conceptual framework was applied to four independently sourced and discreet case organizations to represent multiple exemplars of innovation capacity building. These exemplars were suspended from their context in order to identify essential elements of the innovation capacity development process which in turn were then applied in phase two to the Department of Treasury and Finance (DTF), a Victorian (Australia) public policy organization.

The case raises critical distinctions between “innovation capability” and “innovation capacity”. The discussion offers insight into the process of developing innovation capacity for government policy organizations.

The evaluation method incorporated a novel technique and trialed a phase development instrument for testing the embeddedness of organizational innovation. Both the technique and the instrument would benefit from further refinement, testing and development.

This paper develops work previously presented in O'Connor and Roos that considered the conceptual framework for using intellectual capital as an evaluation framework for organizational innovative capacity. It extends this work by piloting its application in a specific context and offers new insight into the organizational design issues of government organizations facing the challenge of producing innovative policy solutions.

I AM INCLINED to the opinion that the latest serving‐up, in the February issue of the LA Record, of the rebarbative, re‐heated hash which appears each month under the fatuous title ‘the periplus papers’ was having a go at this venerable organ.

Electronics exhibitions are the same the world over, very tiring affairs. If your stand is busy, time flies; if not, the strain is more noticeable.

Since its early conception, the group has grown from a handful of enthusiastic engineers to the largest trade association in Europe, if not the world, for Surface Mount. As in previous years, SMART will be arranging Seminars, Hands‐on Workshops and Open Forums, giving valuable knowledge for those just entering or those already experienced in SMT. Open forums allow the opportunity for the exchange of information on a variety of different topics, building experience in the technology which would otherwise be unobtainable.

This design‐based seminar was aimed at broadening the horizons of designers and engineers. The greatest area of cost reduction in any electronics project is in making the right choices at the conception and design phases. This seminar was one step in this direction: a piece of 1·6 mm FR‐4 is not always the best substrate to use.

The UK is a leader in the implementation of surface mount technology, and SMARTEX '91 sponsored by the SMART Group is one of only a few shows organised worldwide which is dedicated solely to this field. Perhaps it was not surprising then that this year's three‐day event proved a great success.

This conference was the second in the National Physical Laboratory series focusing in turn on each of the non‐CFC options for de‐fluxing soldered electronics assemblies. The first conference was on Controlled Atmosphere Soldering and the third will be on New Solvents.

The SMART Group entered a team for the Electronics Weekly 5‐a‐side competition at the Arsenal F.C. in January. Each team could have up to ten players, with substitutions throughout the game. A breakdown on the motorway of the vehicle bringing most of the SMART Group players resulted in a team of two: Bob Willis and Mike Judd, who were fortunately helped by two late recruits from the Electrovert team. Such dedication from our gallant pair can only be rewarded by keeping silent about the scores!