Novelty Degree Research Articles

Research on game strategy of spacecraft chase and escape based on adaptive augmented random search

To solve the problem of the survival differential policy interception between a spacecraft and a non-cooperative target pursuit game, the pursuit game policy is studied based on reinforcement learning, and the adaptive-augmented random search algorithm is proposed. Firstly, to solve the sparse reward problem of sequential decision making, an exploration method based on the spatial perturbation of parameters of the policy is designed, thus accelerating its convergence speed. Secondly, to avoid the possibility of falling into local optimum prematurely, a novelty degree function is designed to guide the policy update, enhancing the efficiency of data utilization. Finally, the effectiveness and advancement of the exploration method are verified with numerical simulations and compared with those of the augmented random search algorithm, the proximal policy optimization algorithm and the deep deterministic policy gradient algorithm.

Dynamic capabilities for sustainability: Toward a typology based on dimensions of sustainability‐oriented innovation and stakeholder integration

AbstractThis study aims to synthesize the current state of knowledge on conceptualizations of dynamic capabilities for sustainability (DCsS)—patterns of behavior in organizations specialized in adapting to sustainability demands. Our main goal is to elucidate the theoretical nature of the DCsS construct and provide a theoretical foundation for future empirical works. We perform a systematic literature review focused on existing conceptualizations of DCsS. Our content analysis of 86 articles reveals two emerging dimensions that account for variation in DCsS definitions: (i) the novelty degree of pursued sustainability‐oriented innovations and (ii) the level of stakeholder integration. Based on these dimensions, we identify four distinct types of DCsS: (1) firm‐level eco‐efficiency; (2) Firm‐level transformation; (3) supply chain or network level eco‐efficiency; and (4) systemic transformation. We illustrate the predominant underlying practices and related outcomes of each type, as described in the literature. By developing a typology that integrates distinct conceptualizations, we substantiate and clarify the DCsS construct, thus providing a fruitful starting point for more distinct and focused operationalizations of DCsS. By conceptualizing sustainability‐oriented innovation and level of stakeholder integration as integral dimensions constituting DCsS, we offer a more nuanced theoretical understanding of the DCsS construct.

Research on the evaluation of academic journals from a multidimensional fusion measurement perspective

PurposeThis paper aims to conduct a comprehensive analysis to evaluate the current situation of journals, examine the factors that influence their development, and establish an evaluation index system and model. The objective is to enhance the theory and methodologies used for journal evaluation and provide guidance for their positive development.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses empirical data from economics journals to analyse their evaluation dimensions, methods, index system and evaluation framework. This study then assigns weights to journal data using single and combined evaluations in three dimensions: influence, communication and novelty. It calculates several evaluation metrics, including the explanation rate, information entropy value, difference coefficient and novelty degree. Finally, this study applies the concept of fuzzy mathematics to measure the final results.FindingsThe use of affiliation degree and fuzzy Borda number can synthesize ranking and score differences among evaluation methods. It combines internal objective information and improves model accuracy. The novelty of journal topics positively correlates with both the journal impact factor and social media mentions. In addition, journal communication power indicators compensate for the shortcomings of traditional citation analysis. Finally, the three-dimensional representative evaluation index serves as a reminder to academic journals to avoid the vortex of the Matthew effect.Originality/valueThis paper proposes a journal evaluation model comprising academic influence, communication power and novelty dimensions. It uses fuzzy Borda evaluation to address issues related to the weighing of single evaluation methods. This study also analyses the relationship of the three dimensions and offers insights for journal development in the new media era.

Local knowledge spillovers and the effects of related and unrelated variety on the novelty of innovation

ABSTRACT Knowledge spillovers have been identified as a factor affecting the unequal distribution of innovation in space. In this paper we aim to understand how territorial factors shape the novelty degree of innovations. Thus, we perform an empirical analysis that relates territorial factors to innovative performance at the firm level. Our results show that local knowledge spillovers from research and development expenditures are positively associated with upper-level innovation, while local knowledge spillovers from total innovation expenditures are not related to the degree of novelty of innovation. Furthermore, the impacts on innovation are also moderated by related and unrelated varieties since firms in regions with higher regional-related variety are less likely to generate upper-level innovation.

CHANGES IMPACT ON THE DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL OF THE ENTERPRISE

The article examines the impact of changes on the development potential of the enterprise. Possible reactions to changes are considered in detail. The definition of resting potential and action potential is given. Rest potential is not a static indicator of enterprise development, but has a slower pace than action potential. We know that all enterprises are in constant search and improvement, even crises can be perceived as an impetus to action. The authors identified the need to take into account changes in the external environment and the inverse reaction to the external environment, the strength of the impact of changes on the enterprise development potential. The relationship between changes and the potential of the enterprise is identified through a system of sets that helps to establish the relationship and consistency of factors influencing changes, taking into account cross-influences. Among the main factors, we will pay attention to the following: organization, personnel, marketing, technology, novelty degree of equipment and technologies, product update frequency, availability of patents and licenses, product, resources, finances, organizational culture, as well as the main characteristics of the external environment: complexity, mobility, uncertainty and interrelationship of factors. We proposed to use mathematical functions and tuples of the full combination to describe the relationship between changes and enterprise development potential.

Technological Novelty of Patents and Speed to IPO of High-Tech Startups

As a signal of entrepreneurial success and a milestone for further development, high-tech startups are seeking an initial public offering (IPO) as quickly as possible. However, investors’ perceptions of technological innovation, which differs depending on its novelty degree, impact the IPO activities of startups. We theorize that the technological novelty of patents will increase public investors’ concerns and finally reduce startups’ IPO speed, because novel patents embrace a high level of market and technology risks in the commercialization process. Based on empirical data on 408 venture capital(VC)-backed healthcare startups in the US from 1990 to 2010, we find empirical evidence that the technological novelty of patents slows startups’ IPO speed. In addition, we find that the negative effect of technological novelty is weakened for startups with conventional technology, founder inventor, and prominent investors.

Impact of proactive orientation and innovation on exports. Case Colombia / Impacto da orientação proativa e inovação nas exportações. Caso Colômbia

This research paper presents the relationship between the proactive orientation towards the market and the novelty degree of innovation in the internationalization of companies, measured with the export intensity. The data to test the hypothesis of the research were obtained from a sample of Colombian manufacturers from the Second Survey of Development and Technological Innovation, conducted by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE by its abbreviation in Spanish) in Colombia. The survey seeks to establish the dynamics of technological development of the Colombian manufacturing company in terms of the intensity and trajectory of the innovation and technological development activities. From the total number of companies consulted, there were 297 in different sectors that responded to the survey and provided their information to be used in the study. The data were treated by means of a model of ordered logistic regression, whose result was the conclusion that there is a positive relationship between the proactive orientation towards the market and the export intensity, while it was not possible to demonstrate the relationship between novelty in innovation and the same export intensity.

Drivers of eco-innovation in developing countries: the case of Chilean firms

Despite the growing literature on the drivers of eco-innovation, few studies analyze it in developing countries. Therefore, to fill this gap, this paper aims to analyze the influence of different groups of drivers of eco-innovation (technology push, market pull and regulatory push-pull) on two types of eco-innovations: Resources Efficiency and Sustainable Sensitiveness, differentiating between varieties of innovation -product and process- and between the novelty degree- incremental and radical-. The empirical analysis is built using multivariate probit models and considering a sample of Chilean firms in the period 2009-2016. Results show a displacement of open innovation drivers when a developing country is analyzed; Collaboration with Partners, Alliances and Networks, along with the Non R&D Embedded are predominant technological push strategies in this analysis. Furthermore, Market factors would have a driving effect on eco-innovations, while the Public Support is weakly significant.

Innovation dynamics in the Brazilian industrial sector: scenario and reflexions

Purpose This study aims to analyze the innovation overview of the Brazilian industrial sector using data published by innovation survey – PINTEC. The aim was to provide a macro and updated diagnosis of the innovation scenario in Brazil and build reflections for further studies. Design/methodology/approach The authors used information from the years 1998–2014 covered by PINTEC to analyze innovation indicators, namely, innovation types, problems and obstacles, novelty degree, established partnerships and interactions, as well as governmental incentives. This study is exploratory; thus, descriptive methods were used for data presentation through analyses and presented through figures and tables. Findings The results show that innovation of the Brazilian industrial sector is concentrated mainly in the acquisition of machinery and equipment, innovations that already exist in national or global markets, interactions for the innovation process with suppliers and governmental support for financing machinery and equipment acquisitions. Originality/value This study has relevance, as its results provide important subsidies for policy-makers to incorporate the needs and overcome challenges of innovation in Brazil.

Challenges in early phase of product family development processes

The early phase of product development is often described as particularly challenging. Especially in the case of innovations, various challenges that can be attributed to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) are said to come into play. Far more often than breakthrough innovation projects, however, product development projects found in industrial practice incorporate incremental innovations on component or module level. This is especially the case for product developments within product families, where often a large part of modules and technical solutions are used in several products simultaneously and over several development cycles. The aim of this paper is to identify specific challenges especially in the context of the early phase of product families, to assign them to the four dimensions of VUCA and to put them in the context of different boundary conditions, such as novelty degree. For this purpose, a two-part approach was chosen: first, empirical studies concerning the early phase of the product (family) development are summarized, second, three explorative and semi-structured interviews were conducted. As a result, it can be concluded that challenges related to complexity, such as difficult decision-making in balancing internal and external goals or due to interdisciplinary cooperation and coordination between the partners involved, ambiguity, such as due to different interpretations of the same information, as well as uncertainty, such as not knowing about future customer requests, are of particular importance. Challenges related to volatility, on the other hand, were mentioned only sporadically. Furthermore, closeness to the customer, for example, seems to be a boundary condition that favours or prevents the occurrence of certain challenges in the early phase of product family development.

Complementarity effect in the innovation strategy: internal R&D and acquisition of capital with embodied technology

For scale-intensive industries and science-based industries in Germany, we investigate the question whether firms combining internal R&D and acquisition of capital with embodied technology demonstrate better product and process innovation performance than companies using only one of those innovation strategies. Our approach comprises both indirect and direct complementarity tests between those two innovation activities. The empirical results suggest that the combination strategy provides a distinct advantage to companies both in producing product and process innovations. In particular, in product innovations, firms demonstrate a higher novelty degree of their goods, while in process innovations they provide a higher quality improvement (in the science-based industries only) and a significant cost reduction (in the science-based and scale-intensive industries).

Recent Innovation Scenario of the Brazilian Industrial Sector and its Reflections

This study analysed the innovation dynamics of the Brazilian industrial sector using information published by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics in the latest edition of innovation survey - PINTEC - from 2012 to 2014. Information was used to analyse innovation indicators, namely types, novelty degree, established partnerships and interactions, as well as governmental incentives. The aim was to provide a macro and updated diagnosis of innovation scenario in Brazil and build reflections for further studies. This is an exploratory analysis; thus, we used descriptive methods for data presentation, through analyses, figures, and tables. The results show that innovation of Brazilian industrial enterprises concentrates mainly in the acquisition of machinery and equipment, innovations that already exist in national or global markets, interactions for the innovative process with suppliers and government support for financing the acquisition of machines and equipment.

Inbound open innovative strategies and eco-innovation in the Spanish food and beverage industry

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of open innovation strategies on eco-innovation by accounting for type of innovation (product vs. process) and novelty degree (radical vs. incremental) in the context of the Spanish food and beverage manufacturing industry over the period 2008–2014. We find that the breadth of external knowledge sources has a positive effect on firms’ adoption of most eco-innovations. However, the depth of these sources is only significant for process, product, and incremental eco-innovations related to a more efficient use of materials and energy, but not for radical ones. Moreover, our analysis confirms the presence of path dependence and the influence of both market demand and regulatory factors on adoption in general. Nevertheless, important differences with respect to the influence of embodied R&D, non-embodied R&D, training, external R&D, and cooperation on each type of eco-innovation are highlighted while controlling for past eco-innovation behaviour, size, and age of the firm.

Firm Readiness Level for Innovation Projects: A New Decision-Making Tool for Innovation Managers

Innovation projects represent a major challenge for business managers due to their associated uncertainty degree. The already existing methodologies to support the innovation projects are aimed at piloting them and establishing the management stages in a flexible and agile way during their deployment. This paper proposes a complementary ex-ante methodology that seeks to aid the decision-making of companies to choose whether or not to launch a potential innovation project. This methodology evaluates to what extent the technological system of the company has the minimum required maturity degree of competencies to successfully achieve the innovation project. Thus, in first instance, an innovation project is characterized according to its novelty degree; both inside the company and in its environment. Subsequently, according to the previous characterization, the future project will have an impact on the technological system of the company. The capabilities of the firm are represented by a set of good practices associated with the innovation projects’ management that the company is able to deploy. Finally, the minimum maturity degree required by a particular project of these practices is determined. Then, the gap between the maturity requirement profile and the current profile of the company is established enabling to decide on the implementation of the project or not.

Comparative Analysis of Consulting Services in Five European Countries

Abstract The work “Comparative analysis of consulting services in five European countries” intends to offer a general picture of consulting services from five European countries (Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Finland and Romania), through comparative analysis of the indicators presented in FEACO studies: increasing rate of turnover of the consulting market, export level, the evolution of the number of consultant, the evolution of the fees of the consultant, types of consulting services, main field where the clients that request consulting services come from. The main motivation of this research consisted of understanding the reasons for which the transformations that occurred on the consulting market are perceived differently by each of the countries that were analysed. A first step in the process of understanding the management consultancy is represented by defining it, first according to the vision of well-known authors, experienced consultants and secondly, according to the vision of profession organism on international and local level. In order to understand the way consultancy evolved in time it is necessary to present a short history with focus on the moments that led to the transformations which we have nowadays in this industry. The last part of the work was dedicated to the comparative analysis of the consultancy markets in the five countries. The novelty degree of the work is represented by the fact that all the strong points identified in the case of the four countries (Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Finland) will constitute possible development directions for the Romanian consulting market.

Adapting Novelty to Classical Planning as Heuristic Search

The introduction of the concept of state novelty has advanced the state of the art in deterministic online planning in Atari-like problems and in planning with rewards in general, when rewards are defined on states. In classical planning, however, the success of novelty as the dichotomy between novel and non-novel states was somewhat limited. Until very recently, novelty-based methods were not able to successfully compete with state-of-the-art heuristic search based planners. In this work we adapt the concept of novelty to heuristic search planning, defining the novelty of a state with respect to its heuristic estimate. We extend the dichotomy between novel and non-novel states and quantify the novelty degree of state facts. We then show a variety of heuristics based on the concept of novelty and exploit the recently introduced best-first width search for satisficing classical planning. Finally,we empirically show the resulting planners to significantly improve the state of the art in satisficing planning.

Product innovation: When should suppliers begin to collaborate?

This study analyzes how Spanish manufacturing firms' technological collaboration with suppliers affects these firms' product innovation. This research also considers innovation novelty (radical versus incremental). Using the 2007–2010 data from the ESEE (Business Strategies Survey), logistic regression analysis shows that technological collaboration with suppliers is an important factor in the innovation process. Novelty degree is also an important factor because collaboration's effect varies over time: early supplier involvement is not always essential.

Employment Effects of Different Innovation Activities: Microeconometric Evidence

Using the model recently developed by Jaumandreu (2003) this paper reports new results on the relationship between innovation and employment growth in Germany. The model is tailor-made for analysing firm-level employment effects of innovations using specific information provided by CIS data. It establishes a theoretical link between employment growth and innovation output. The econometric analysis confirms that product innovations have a positive impact on employment. In contrast to previous studies, this effect is independent of the novelty degree. Moreover, different employment effects between manufacturing and service firms regarding process innovations were found. Finally, from a cross country perspective the results for Germany are similar to those found for Spain and the UK.

The Nature of Innovation and the Origin of Technological Spillovers

The aim of this paper is to show that innovations are the result of complex interactions between different private and public agents. For that, we identify the nature of the information sources that firms use to produce their innovations and assess the impact of these different sources on the results of the innovation process. We develop an econometric sequential model dealing successively with the innovation decision and the nature of innovation and use recent French data coming from the 1997 Community Innovation Survey. The main results are that innovation is not the result of isolated agents and that firms use very differently information sources according to the novelty degree of their innovation.