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Purpose – The purpose of the chapter is to sketch the historical and evolutionary development of the Wichita Aircraft Manufacturing Cluster from inception to present and provide a descriptive narrative of aircraft industry knowledge spillovers currently driving effort to establish a Medical Device Manufacturing Cluster. The chapter illustrates how carbon-fiber composite materials knowledge and technology developed for use in the aviation industry is facilitating the creation and growth of medical device manufacturing.

Methodology/approach – We use an historical case study approach to trace the development of the aircraft cluster in the Wichita, KS metropolitan area. A number of technologies are identified that had initially been adopted by one firm but eventually diffused through other firms in the local cluster and ultimately throughout the industry.

Findings – In addition to providing examples of within industry knowledge spillovers, we provide an example of technology-based knowledge that is diffusing through the aircraft manufacturing industry and is now being used as the basis for establishing an unrelated industry manufacturing cluster. The use of carbon-fiber composites in aircraft manufacturing has diffused from one manufacturer to many in the industry. Subsequently, the knowledge base surrounding carbon-fiber composite materials is being used in a local R&D effort to create a second manufacturing cluster producing medical devices ranging from surgical instruments to joint-replacement implants.

Originality/value of paper – The chapter illustrates a unique example of a manufacturing cluster, intra-industry knowledge spillovers, and inter-industry knowledge spillovers to create a new manufacturing cluster.

As the Rohingya minority is expelled from their native society, many families have migrated to India where they face societal, legal, and educational discrimination due to lack of transactional relationship with the Indian state. This study aims to understand how the schooling of Rohingya children in the Kalindi Kunj’s Myanmar Refugee Camp in the city of New Delhi (India) is associated with the aspirations of the children and of their parents in the face of cultural disruptions in the socialization of the children. This ethnographical study is based on the narratives of both children and their parents from the Rohingya refugee community as a tool to capture their life-worlds.

We investigate product innovation by a cohort of entrants who use technology that eventually suffers disruption. We concentrate on two types of entrants – those with and those without relevant prior experience in the disrupted technology. Using the industrial robotics industry as the context of our study, we explore product innovation using disrupted technology during two time periods: the first prior to sales takeoff of the disruptive products and the second subsequent to takeoff. We find that the two types of entrants did not differ in product innovation prior to takeoff, but firms with prior experience in the disrupted technology manufactured more innovative products subsequent to the sales takeoff of disruptive products. Our research underscores that the boundary conditions of the utility of prior experience is more nuanced than that which literature suggests – it affects product innovation only in the post-sales takeoff period when the demand uncertainties are relatively low. Our findings also suggest that the boundary conditions of Christensen’s thesis are narrower than predicted by prior literature.

The aim of this chapter is to illustrate and discuss — through a case study of Sandvik Corporation — how business practices with focus on sales can improve with regard to effectiveness and efficiency by utilization of IT tools. This approach challenges the traditional view of doing business in big industrial corporations where sales experts known as sales stars have traditionally developed relationships with customers. In order to do this, the chapter initially delineates the traditional business practices and the main issues associated with this approach.

The following section brings up the case of Sandvik Corporation. This part of the chapter first discusses problems with unorganized business practices as a source of business inefficiency. These problems are represented by (1) offer and order management, (2) pricing and value, and (3) customer planning and daily work routines. The consequent part of this section illustrates how the company improved its business by organizing business practices using CRM tools. The discussion of the new efficiencies is supported by elaboration on the Sandvik’s Sales Program that the organization launched in order to address the above mentioned problems of inefficiencies is sales work. The chapter ends with potential new challenges that the implementation of IT tools brought about and a summary of the chapter.

China's defense industry is analyzed by comparing the technical level of the military and civilian products manufactured by China's nuclear, space, aviation, shipbuilding, ordnance, and electronics industries with their advanced counterparts. Generally, China's defense industry is about 20 years behind the global leaders. Thus, it is inappropriate to declare China's emergence as the world’s second military power. However, if it continues on its current development trajectory, it will attain that status in the near future.