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The purpose of this paper is to analyze theory of inventive problem-solving (TRIZ) in terms of knowledge, skill, workload and affect to understand its effectiveness in enabling designers to achieve their optimized mental performance.

TASKS framework, which aims to capture the causal relations among Task workload, affect, skills, knowledge and mental stress, is adopted as our methodology. The framework supports the analysis of how a methodology influence designer’s affect, skills, knowledge and workload. TRIZ-related publications are assessed using the TASKS framework to identify the barriers and enablers in TRIZ-supported design.

TRIZ has limitations on its logic and tools. Nevertheless, it could create a beneficial impact on mental performance of designers.

This paper provides a theory-driven TRIZ usability analysis based on the materials in the literature following the TASKS framework. The impact of TRIZ, as an enabler or a barrier, has been analyzed in accomplishing a design task.

The research about the patterns of technology evolution is populated by descriptive models, explaining quite regular trends of product development processes. The most popular schemes share the idea of long innovation periods characterized by incremental improvements and punctuated by technological turmoil events. Within the engineering field, such pattern can be described by S-shaped curves depicting the growth of performances in charge of technological paradigms, which approach their natural limit after entering their maturity stage. The birth of a novel S-curve symbolizes the emergence of a new breakthrough technology, which is followed by the choice of a preferred paradigm in the industry, generally designated as Dominant Design. However, new exigencies expressed by practitioners have remarked the limitations of qualitative models. Whereas some contributions openly question the general validity of the described models, a remarkable amount of literature claims that certain conditions related to the innovation processes have to be respected to make the outlined frameworks be valid. A deeper understanding about the open issues raised by the paper would result in more conscious innovation practices. Indeed, the exploitation of reliable models pertaining innovation trajectories could result in assessing the advantages arising by introducing new product functions or characteristics, enhancing performances on which industry is currently competing, reengineering manufacturing processes.

Several scholars dealing with business innovation individuate a great role played by customer value in achieving market success. With this perspective the investigation of prescriptive means for New Value Proposition represents a promising, although still poorly explored, domain. The paper presents an original approach to investigating past success stories focused around approaches derived from "Blue Ocean Strategy", for this new dimensions of performance and value have been introduced. The lesson learned from this survey is that certain strategies based on the fulfilment of established or overlooked customer needs provide greater market appraisal. This article introduces some preliminary directions to support the rethinking of products and services.

The authors present the elements constituting an advantageous business model, and suggest how to achieve that competitive edge. They argue that traditional innovation processes with funnelling front-end, stage-gate with go/kill decisions, and similar processes have inherent limitations in such an inclusive concept. They propose an alternative approach, driven by strategic business options. A business model, like everything else, has a limited life span. Anew model requires radical changes in thinking and logics. Still, the move is not easy, and most attempts will fail. The right timing is tricky, plans to abandon an existing model might feel dispiriting, and the necessity to change can be blinded by past successes. This article discusses these complex aspects and the steps needed to overcome them. Finally, in ever-changing business competition it is not realistic to constantly renew inside-out. Instead, for a company to survive, its business model must have a very important quality known as resilience. This article is based on the authors' extensive practical experience in a global business environment, as well as on their academic work.

As the restaurant industry is a representative service industry, long-living restaurants could carry the secrets of key factors that are needed to establish “sustainable business models” in service industry. The authors aim to answer the following question: How can restaurants innovate business model sustainably to last for more than 50 years through the era of digital transformation with open innovation dynamics?

Five long-lived restaurants from Daegu, Kyoto and Naples were selected separately by using the snowballing approach, and were analyzed through in-depth interviews and participatory observations.

Restaurants in Daegu have lived long mainly because of adding value to their recipes. Restaurants in Kyoto have lived very long, primarily by decoupling their original services, ingredients and recipes. Restaurants in Naples have enjoyed long lives by coupling or recoupling their ingredients, services and recipes.

The implication is that long-living restaurants or service firms could maintain their own sustainability by dynamically circling the following services: (1) adding and boning recipes (focusing on special menus or products), (2) coupling of ingredients (creative recoupling of original ingredients) and (3) decoupling of services (disconnecting the value chain and rebalancing it).