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This study has covered many types of solar-powered air-conditioning systems that may be used as an alternative to traditional electrically powered air-conditioning systems in order to reduce energy usage. Solar adsorption air cooling is a great alternative to traditional vapor compression air-conditioning. Solar adsorption has several advantages over traditional vapor-compression systems, including being a green cooling technology which uses solar energy to drive the cycle, using pure water as an eco-friendly HFC-free refrigerant, and being mechanically simple with only the magnetic valves as moving parts. Several advancements and breakthroughs have been developed in the area of solar adsorption air-conditioners during the previous decade. However, further study is required before this technology can be put into practise. As a result, this book chapter highlights current research that adds to the understanding of solar adsorption air-conditioning technologies, with a focus on practical research. These systems have the potential to become the next iteration of air-conditioning systems, with the benefit of lowering energy usage while using plentiful solar energy supplies to supply the cooling demand.

In recent times, extant literature increasingly underscores the importance of indigenous innovations. This chapter provides an empirical illustration that a collaboration between indigenous knowledge systems and mainstream knowledge systems will not only help overcome the shortcomings in both systems, but also result in more cost-effective and environmentally friendly solutions. The chapter also advocates for public policies that facilitate the development and dissemination of such innovations. Using a case study from the Nigerian context, a framework is provided in this chapter, to illustrate how scientific knowledge can be applied to indigenous innovations to result in the next generation of sustainable, cost-effective and environmentally friendly solutions.

This chapter addresses the dynamics in inter-organizational relations. The authors probe the value networks so prevalent within contemporary ­manufacturing to put forward that their basic cooperation/competition duality manifests itself in practical terms as capability, appropriation, and governance paradoxes. The authors conducted a longitudinal ethnographic study aimed at capturing the process by which inter-organizational collabor­ation in ­manufacturing value networks is enacted. Our study finds that inter-organizational relations are “nested” in that a relationship plays out over an interpersonal network where the inter-organizational relationships are a framework for action, while simultaneously interpersonal interactions affect how the inter-organizational relationships take shape and evolve. Furthermore, we found that inter-organizational dynamics is essentially a stratified process. Solving particular and concrete problems at the surface level, with regard to specific collaboration issues between organizations, simultaneously shapes truces with regard to the underlying capability, appropriation, and governance paradoxes.

This chapter presents a framework for evaluating commercialization strategies available to start-up innovators operating in high-technology industries. The chapter uses a stream of research relating to three major considerations for commercialization strategies: intellectual property rights’ strength; requisite complementary assets; and licensing/alliance transaction costs. The authors describe the options available to the innovator and explain how the attractiveness of alliances increases with the strength of the innovator's IPR position and the cost of acquiring complementary assets. The four distinct commercialization environments defined by these factors then are related to the likelihood an innovator will commercialize an invention through cooperation or competition. The chapter then applies the framework to five case studies of start-up innovators in a major research university's business incubator.

In every industry there are resources. Some are moving, others more fixed; some are technical, others social. People working with the resources, for example, as buyers or sellers, or users or producers, may not make much notice of them. A product sells. A facility functions. The business relationship in which we make our money has “always” been there. However, some times this picture of order is disturbed. A user having purchased a product for decades may “suddenly” say to the producer that s/he does not appreciate the product. And a producer having received an order of a product that s/he thought was well known, may find it impossible to sell it. Such disturbances may be ignored. Or they can be used as a platform for development. In this study we investigate the latter option, theoretically and through real world data. Concerning theory we draw on the industrial network approach. We see industrial actors as part of (industrial) networks. In their activities actors use and produce resources. Moreover, the actors interact − bilaterally and multilaterally. This leads to development of resources and networks. Through “thick” descriptions of two cases we illustrate and try to understand the interactive character of resource development and how actors do business on features of resources. The cases are about a certain type of resource, a product − goat milk. The main message to industrial actors is that they should pay attention to that products can be co-created. Successful co-creation of products, moreover, may require development also of business relationships and their connections (“networking”).