Next-generation Products Research Articles

WHEN THE NAME IS THE GAME

In Romeo and Juliet, the fair maiden asks, “What's in a name?” When it comes to marketing next-generation products for the global marketplace, Marco Bertini, John Gourville and Elie Ofek have done extensive research and found that names can play an enormous role in a product's success.

Pinpoint Engineering: Quieting Booming Noise in Tractors

Using acoustic simulation software and clever detective work, LMS Engineering Services helped John Deere spot a resonance from an unexpected source, giving the world's leading agricultural equipment manufacturer the tools and insight to further improve the acoustic quality in their upcoming next-generation of products. Today farmers feed the world faster: the average farmer produces 12 times more agricultural output per hour than one in the 1950s. This is thanks to improved agriculture techniques and high performance equipment such as tractors with GPS precision guidance, intelligent power management systems, powerful engines, high-torque transmissions and other advanced technology.

Joseph DiVanna and Antoine Sreih A New Financial Dawn: The Rise of Islamic Finance Leonardo and Francis Press Ltd. Cambridge, UK, 2009, pp. 166.

The code word for this book is "Innovation". Utilizing innovation in the "development of the next generation of products" is the main theme of the book. The authors go beyond explaining the principles of Islamic finance and how different it is from conventional finance to prescribing the ingredients for market growth and development. Though innovation is a significant ingredient, seizing the opportunities to create Shariah-compliant products and preserving the theological and ethical foundations of Islamic finance are necessary elements.

Advancing innovation through R&D the A*STAR way

I. NEED FOR RELENTLESS INNOVATION THROUGH R&D The need to innovate in this rapidly changing economy to create new and higher value is given. At the Agency for Science, Technology and Research A STAR , innovation is our raison d’etre to help create the future of Singapore. Data Storage Institute DSI is one of A STAR’s research institutes RIs . It was established to support the growth of the data storage industry in Singapore. In the early days of DSI in the 1990s, one in two disk-drives worldwide was made in Singapore. Over time, the production of such diskdrives began to move to lower cost countries. DSI continued to develop new capabilities and innovate and supported the shift of the data storage industries toward higher value-added activities. Today, eight out of ten higher value-added high-end enterprise drives and nearly five out of ten hard disk media are manufactured in Singapore. These growth and success of the data storage industry in Singapore have also persuaded key industry players, such as Seagate, Fujitsu, EMC, Seiko, and Nitto Denko, to establish corporate R&D laboratories in Singapore. Seiko and Nitto Denko, in particular, are now colocated with DSI in Fusionopolis—the science and engineering hub in Singapore. We are mindful that these companies will remain in Singapore for as long as we continue to offer a competitive value proposition. This is why DSI has to continue to look ahead to build capabilities to support the key industry players on developing next-generation products such as cost-competitive nonvolatile memory devices and high density magnetic storage at 10 Tbytes / in.2. The challenge therefore is how to do this right by leveraging on what little natural or man-made advantages that Singapore has to sustain Singapore’s competitive advantage. This is the only way for us to achieve our mission to foster world-class research and talent for Singapore in this knowledge-based and innovation-driven world, and it is how we can contribute toward establishing Singapore as Asia’s innovation capital.

Design and implementations series V: IMS applications and support [Series Editorial

The IEEE Communications Magazine editorial team characterizes Series and Feature Topics as covering either vertical or horizontal topics. A topic is vertical if it is focused on a particular communication technology (e.g., next-generation optical switching). A topic is horizontal if it focuses on some operational aspect that is common across many communications technologies, such as interoperability testing or performance testing. The Design and Implementation (D&I) Series is horizontal, as D&I articles are intended to teach industry professionals about building next-generation communications products and services, regardless of the specific technology area.

Coreless Substrate Design, Assembly and Reliability for High Speed Applications

There are 2 primary drivers for advanced substrate technologies to support the next generation of products. One driver is silicon designs which are shifting to 20–40 GBit applications. The band width of these products are requiring advanced materials, and designs which use much thinner cores making routing and manufacturing of these packages easier. The second driver is the move more advanced silicon nodes which also drives the importance for much better power delivery. Coreless substrates enable both of these applications by eliminating the core layer which enables much finner via pitchs to route signals and power/gnd planes. The thinness also reduces the bandwidth used up by the substrate which also enables better electrical performance. This paper will focus on the electrical drivers including simulation to support the structure, flip chip assembly of the package as well as the reliability data associated with the assembly.

A Research for Evolutionary Process Based on TRIZ Evolution Theory

Technology Evolutionary Process have own rule and model,it can be forcasted. How to predict the future technological development and quickly develop next-generation products has become a powerful weapon of market competition. TRIZ EvolutionTheory is one of the most advantages and vitality in almost product technology prediction theory. This article summarized the evolution mode and evolution route based on in-depth study of TRIZ evolution theory ,and researched correlation.At last this article introduced how to use the basic principles of evolutionary theory to solve practical problems of the process approach. And to farming with the plow as an example a typical product design, to have been verified.

Branding Next-Generation Products

We study the effect of brand name selection on consumer perceptions and adoption of next-generation product innovations. In four experiments, participants evaluated next-generation offerings whose brand names either continued or interrupted the existing naming sequences. The first set of results show that while consumers anticipate enhanced performance on existing product features (i.e., alignable improvements) irrespective of the branding decision, a name change triggers significantly higher expectations of new features (i.e., nonalignable improvements). Next, we examined the implication of this finding for purchase intentions. The added layer of innovation inferred from a brand name change led participants to believe they were exposed to greater risk as well as greater reward. As a result, in the last two experiments we found that situational and dispositional factors influencing the relative salience of these conflicting beliefs ultimately determined whether a particular naming option stimulated or hindered demand.

Spectrum Access Games and Strategic Learning in Cognitive Radio Networks for Delay-Critical Applications

With the current proliferation of high bandwidth and delay-sensitive multimedia applications and services, each wireless user will try to maximize its utility by acquiring as much spectrum resources as possible unless a preemptive mechanism exists in the network. Thus, emerging solutions for dynamic spectrum access in cognitive radio networks will need to adopt market-based approaches in order to effectively regulate the available resources. In this paper, we show how various centralized and decentralized spectrum access markets can be designed based on a stochastic game framework, where wireless users (also referred to as secondary users) can compete over time for the dynamically available transmission opportunities (spectrum ldquoholesrdquo). When operating in such spectrum access ldquomarkets,rdquo wireless users become selfish, autonomous agents that strategically interact in order to acquire the necessary spectrum opportunities. We also show how wireless users can successfully compete with each other for the limited and time-varying spectrum opportunities, given the experienced dynamics in the wireless network, by optimizing both their external actions (e.g., the resource bids, power and channel used for transmission, etc.) and their internal actions (e.g., the modulation schemes, etc.). To determine their optimal actions in an informationally decentralized setting, users will need to learn and model directly or indirectly the other users' responses to their external actions. We studied the outcome of various dynamic interactions among self-interested wireless users possessing different knowledge and determine that the proposed framework can lead to multiuser communication systems that achieve new measures of efficiency, rationality and fairness. Lastly, our illustrative results show that the presented game-theoretic solution for wireless resource management enables users deploying enhanced (ldquosmarterrdquo) learning and communication algorithms and being able to make efficient use of the spectrum resources can derive higher utilities. This presents the designers of wireless devices and systems with important incentives to endow their next-generation products and services with enhanced capabilities to gather information, learn, and strategically compete for resources in the emerging spectrum resource markets made possible by the cognitive radio network technologies.

Timing New Drug Introductions: The Roles of Regulatory Rules and Firms' Complementary Assets

We demonstrate the dual affects that regulatory rules and firms' complementary assets have on the timing of new product introductions in the pharmaceutical industry. We develop theory and evidence to explain how incumbent firms respond with new product introductions to a change in their competitive environment-namely, the increasing use by generic entrants of Paragraph IV Challenges under the U.S. Hatch-Waxman Act. Noting that such challenges increase the likelihood of earlier generic competition, we theorize incumbent firms' branded-product revenue streams are being compressed and that, in turn, incumbents are responding to the Hatch-Waxman milestones by marketing new products. We also uncover the important role that complementary assets play, both in enabling and constraining the firm's ability to respond. Using a novel set of product-level data, we explore the determinants of firms' new product introductions, uncovering the importance of internal research capabilities and strategic patenting. Extending this analysis, we examine the factors that increase the tendency of firms to target the Hatch-Waxman milestones with new product launches. We also investigate the types of new products being launched, and find a dependence on reformulations and next-generation products, but also emphasize the critical role of novel drug development.

Progress and Challenges in Commercialization of Organic Electronics

AbstractThe field of organic electronics is entering its commercial phase. The recent market introduction of the first prototypes based on organic transistors fabricated from solution is set to augment the existing market presence of organic light-emitting diode applications. Organic photovoltaic products are not far behind. In this article, we provide a brief overview of these devices, with our main focus being organic transistor applications. In particular, we examine some of the key performance requirements for working devices. We also review some of the important advances in semiconductor design and device fabrication techniques and discuss some of the technical challenges that remain in the optimization of next-generation products.

Electronic paper targets colour video

Although electronic paper that can display monochrome static images has been growing in popularity, the next generation of products will soon be capable of displaying video in full colour. Duncan Graham-Rowe reports.

TRENDS AND CONSTRAINTS FOR FLUID POWER IN MOBILE MACHINERY

The development of fluid power systems for use in agricultural and construction machinery faced in the last years a substantial contribution due to the increasing role played by electronics. The scenario of the next years in agricultural and construction will be very much influenced by legislation constraints in terms of environmental compatibility, noise emission, energy usage and recyclability. The new set of requirements in terms of safety level for machines, described in documents like ISO 15998:2008 will change the boundary conditions for machine design, requiring a deep investigation at system level, which will force a change in the design perspective for fluid power components. The new possibilities given by an extensive use of embedded electronics, advanced architectures and system level design of machines will be investigated and described trying to highlight threats and opportunities for next generation of products.

Report on the AIIDE'07 Conference

Over the past decade, the commercial games industry has come to realize the importance of AI to its next-generation products. Similarly, the academic community now recognizes the interesting research challenges of game AI. AAAI responded to this interest with the creation in 2005 of the Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment conference series. The third AIIDE conference was held in June 2007 and was a great success. It featured 10 (!) invited speakers and attracted an excellent mix of academic researchers and industry practitioners.

A New Gate-Charging Protection Strategy for Transistors in Integrated-Circuit Test Chips and Products

This paper presents a new gate-charging protection strategy for transistors in integrated-circuit (IC) test chips and products. The strategy, using a low-threshold-voltage protection device (PD) of the highest voltage class (i.e., with the thickest available gate oxide) in any given process technology, is capable of providing full charging protection for transistors of all voltage classes during back-end plasma-involved manufacturing process. In conjunction with a method that globally turns off the PDs, the strategy also minimizes the protection-device-induced leakages during electrical tests or circuit operation. This new gate-charging protection strategy can benefit the design and manufacturing for the next-generation IC test chips and products, in particular for circuit products emphasized on low voltage and current and low power consumption.

Do early adopters upgrade early? Role of post-adoption behavior in the purchase of next-generation products

In examining the adoption of innovations, marketing researchers have generally assumed that the early adopters of one product are more likely to be early in adopting the next generation of products. However, there seems to be a missing link between buyers' first adoptions and their next-generation purchases, or upgrades. This paper tries to fill the gap by incorporating users' post-adoption behavior into the model of buyers' product upgrade behavior on the successive versions of innovations. Survey data on cell phone purchases in Korea confirm the idea that the post-adoption behavior, particularly the use of innovative features, plays a critical role in developing users' intention to upgrade.

Roundtable: Design and CAD Challenges for Leading-Edge Multimedia Designs

Multimedia, game, and entertainment devices have pushed the leading edge of performance, complexity, power, form factor, design cycle time, and other key aspects of ASIC design for the past several technology nodes. This roundtable brings together experts who are defining the next generation of gaming, mobile-TV, digital-home, display, and multimedia-processing platforms. The discussion spans the underlying chip architectures and roadmaps, as well as the key design, technology, and market challenges for next-generation products.

Multiple dosage forms of the NNRTI microbicide dapivirine: product development and evaluation

The disproportionate impact of the expanding AIDS epidemic in women of the developing world clearly establishes the need for anti-HIV microbicides. Although semi-solid gels were the conventional dosage form developed for early microbicides, newer acceptability data and studies from the contraceptive field have demonstrated the need for additional alternative dosage forms that are acceptable to the relevant target populations. Reducing the burden of user compliance is equally critical in the next generation of products. Our development efforts with the highly potent NNRTI microbicide dapivirine have involved multiple dosage forms, with the objective of decoupling product use from sexual intercourse. Once per day gels and tablets are being developed, as are intravaginal ring delivery systems for sustained release. Preclinical development studies, formulation development and characterization, and clinical evaluations of these alternative drug product forms will be discussed. Our findings suggest that potent anti-retroviral compounds can be safely configured for acceptable dosing in women, and that these drugs and delivery strategies can be successfully applied in microbicide development.

Product design: a vectors field-based approach for preference modelling

Taking the needs of a consumer into account is imperative in product design. In many cases, aesthetic properties are as important as technical functions. When one considers the subjective part of the requirements, the feelings, impressions, sensations or preferences customers have must be quantified and modelled in advance. This is a major challenge in industrial design. Methods and tools need to be developed so that the subjectivity of the human assessment can be captured and integrated into the design process. In this context, we propose a new method based on vectors fields for modelling customers' preferences. Our method models the preferences in a perceptual space, in which the perceptual attributes of a family of products can be described. In this paper, we have used multidimensional scaling for building the perceptual space and we have applied our method in an example based on a set of 15 cars. Using customer's preferences obtained by pairwise comparison, our method allows the modelling of complex preference structures; in particular, inconsistent and intransitive preferences. Our results are intended to provide the designer with a description of the perceptual attributes of the product and information to position the next generation of products in a high preference area.

Saving Energy during Channel Contention in 802.11 WLANs

We focus on energy saving in 802.11-based WLANs. Previous work has shown that, on the one hand, 802.11 wireless interfaces consume a significant amount of energy, on the other hand the use of current power management schemes can severely degrade the QoS performance of several Internet-based applications. Furthermore, the energy spent by wireless devices may even increase when the standard 802.11 power-saving mode (PSM) is implemented. These facts suggest that other solutions to energy saving are highly needed.In this paper, we consider the 802.11 distributed access scheme and we propose a novel approach that enables a station to enter a low-power operational state during channel contention. More specifically, our technique exploits the virtual carrier sense mechanism and the backoff function specified in the IEEE 802.11 DCF, so that a station can dramatically reduce its energy consumption without significant degradation of the QoS performance. To efficiently implement our mechanism, a low-power state with negligible transition time into the active state must be identified. This can be any of the non-standard, low-power states defined by proprietary solutions in the current or next-generation products [7,15,22]. By using the network simulator ns2, we evaluate the performance improvement that is obtained when the proposed mechanism is implemented, against the results attained through the standard DCF. The results show that we can achieve a reduction in energy consumption as large as 80% and 28% under, respectively, UDP and TCP traffic.