Role In Innovation Process Research Articles

Towards the Concept of Digital Grassroots Youth Innovation

In recent years, young people have acquired a more active role in different areas of public life, such as culture, politics and gender debates. However, the relevance of their role in innovation processes has remained largely undiscussed. Are young people, in particular those from working class backgrounds, a forgotten actor for innovation and technological change policies? This study aims to understand whether the youth population—who are widely connected to the Internet, who do not necessarily participate in formal educational spaces but are increasingly acquiring digital skills autonomously—can be considered as an agent of innovation. Specifically, this study aims to propose and define the concept of Digital Grassroots Youth Innovation. It is based on both empirical and theoretical sources. On the one hand, it relies on a compilation of experiences of innovative activities related to digital technologies led by young people in Argentina. On the other hand, it is supported by a theoretical discussion on (a) the different types of innovations and their subjects, (b) the specificities of the ‘marginal mass’ in informational capitalism and (c) the characterisation of the young population in Argentina as ‘NEET’ (not in education, employment or training). Finally, we ask about the role played by digital technologies and non-formal learning in these particular innovation processes.

Knowledge Management Mechanisms at MNCs and the Enhancing Effect of Absorptive Capacity

Knowledge management has a pivotal role in innovation processes and on firms’ competitiveness. In order to generate innovations, firms may access knowledge from different sources, including their internal and external environments. However, to fully assimilate such knowledge and apply it to commercial ends, firms need absorptive capacity (AC). AC is particularly important for multinational corporations (MNCs), as they face several learning challenges arising from increased global competition as well as geographic, institutional, and cultural differences. With this in mind, my dissertation explores the relationship between knowledge management mechanisms and innovation and performance outcomes as well as the enabling role of absorptive capacity in such relationships. The findings show that MNC managers can use different mechanisms for souring, transferring, and applying knowledge, which increase the firm´s ability to absorb knowledge and, in turn, lead to product and/or process innovation.

Artificial Intelligence as an Actor in Innovation Teams: An Assessment of the GPT-3 Language Model

Transformer-based language models are a new type of machine learning model that have shown great promise for many applications, including knowledge extraction and generation. In this paper, we explore the potential of transformer-based language models for innovation processes and identify some example use cases. We discuss the benefits of using transformer-based language models in hybrid intelligence teams and outline some limitations of the technology. Finally, we propose several research questions that could help further our understanding of transformer-based language model’s role in innovation processes. (Note: Contributing to the idea of this paper, the abstract was entirely created by the GPT-3 algorithm.)

Triggering Open Innovation Processes Through Organizational Emotional Capability and Rival's Absorptive Capacity Orientation

In this article, we analyze the direct effects of the open innovation (OI) processes of acquisition and exploitation on innovation performance (IP), as well as the effects of two antecedents of OI: organizational emotional capability (EC) and rival´s absorptive capacity orientation (RACO). RACO implies processing external information in an analytical manner, whereas an intuitive approach is implicit in EC. The research model is tested in a sample of medium-low-technology Colombian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using structural equations by the consistent partial least squares method. Our results provide evidence on a significant effect of the OI acquisition process on IP, as well as the determining role of RACO for firm-level innovation, in that it functions not only as an informal mechanism for intellectual property rights protection, but also as a knowledge process nourishing the OI exploitation process. This article contributes to the incipient research field of OI in low- and medium-technology SMEs, offering new evidence on the results on the OI-IP relationship in contrast with previous studies conducted in other technological contexts. Furthermore, EC, which has traditionally proven its incidence on internal innovation activities, can have a more powerful and determining role in innovation processes that imply collaborative work with third parties.

Autonomous vehicles experiment: which role in innovation process?

Autonomous vehicles experiment: which role in innovation process?

Innovativeness as a driving force and an opportunity for economic growth

Background: The subject of the article’s research is the broadly understood idea that innovation contributes to economic growth. Economic growth is one of the most important research issues undertaken in the scope of economic sciences. Modern phenomena and socio-economic trends indicate that innovation as an element conditioning the economic growth of countries. We are forced to pay attention to factors such as knowledge, experience, creativity, and what binds them together, innovations being the products of creative effort. Innovative activities are designed to support the well-being of citizens and society, as well as to provide industry and enterprises with a competitive position on both domestic and international markets. Societies need innovation to achieve a high quality of life: new products, services, technologies, and organization systems. New products are often modelled on known ones, through specific changes, improvements, or simplifications of own or foreign products whereas new ideas, in general, have their source in knowledge.1
 Research purpose: The aim of this article is an attempt to answer the research question: “why innovation is a key factor in economic development and growth?” To start with, the pioneering definition of J. Schumpeter regarding innovation in economy was reviewed, by i.a. Ph. Kotler, M.E. Porter or R.W. Griffin and selected Polish scientists. The following subchapters present types of innovation and the role of innovation processes in the modern economy, as well as results of studies convincing of the significant role of innovativeness in the economy.
 Methods: Literature analysis was used as the research method. The first part reviews the terms of innovation and innovativeness.
 Conclusions: The following conclusions emerge from the article: a country’s economy achievesa higher economic growth, the better it uses the resources at its disposal, such as: natural conditions, financial resources, material capital created by people, and those to which increasing importance is attached, i.e. knowledge resources: patents, scientific and expert support, human resources, skills, creative potential as well as cultural capital, meaning attitudes and values related to in­novation. Enterprises, through innovations, improve and update production processes, increase productivity, efficiency, and quality of work, which translates into higher employee remuneration. An innovative enterprise, increasing the quality of its products and the overall efficiency as well as effectiveness of its operations by improving organization and working methods, becomes more competitive on the market.

ФОРМИРОВАНИЕ УЧЕТНО-АНАЛИТИЧЕСКОЙ СРЕДЫ ИННОВАЦИОННОЙ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ ОРГАНИЗАЦИИ

Today we can talk about the increasing role of innovation processes in increasing the competitiveness of national economies, since statistics show that in advanced economies, innovations account for up to 80% of GDP. The article examines the essence of innovation processes, as well as the accounting and analytical environment of innovation in order to increase the competitiveness of business.

Experiencias de innovación en la práctica docente en educación superior. De la reflexión a la acción

Actualmente la innovación en la práctica docente es un tema relevante en las instituciones de educación superior para fortalecer las competencias y el ejercicio profesional docente así como para lograr mejoras notables en los procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje, mismas que se concretan en experiencias docentes mediante proyectos de innovación en universidades públicas y en escuelas normalistas como es el caso de la Red de Comunidades para la Renovación de la Enseñanza-Aprendizaje en Educación Superior (RECREA). En el presente artículo se describe y analizan las experiencias de innovación de la práctica educativas de docentes de la Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo llevadas a cabo en el proyecto RECREA durante los procesos de formación y los diseños instruccionales que se derivaron de esta, así como la implementación de la experiencia en el aula en el año 2018, que fue el primer año del proyecto. La metodología para analizar estas experiencias se basó en la investigación-acción porque a partir de la reflexión-acción, los docentes pueden mejorar sus prácticas. Por tanto, la participación y la colaboración tienen un papel importante en los procesos de innovación. Con la descripción de las etapas de formación durante el proyecto RECREA, se pudo obtener información relevante para analizar los procesos de mejora como de oportunidades para cambiar las prácticas docentes. Los ejes transversales desarrollados durante el proyecto para la transformación de la práctica docente que se integran en la reflexión son: i) Pensamiento complejo, ii) Uso de las TIC e iii) Investigación-acción, que sirvió como metodología para abordar el proceso de innovación en la práctica docente. Los resultados encontrados, indican que hubo una mejoría sustancial en la práctica docente y en el aprendizaje de los estudiantes. También, motivó al diseño de estrategias más creativas y menos fragmentadas como se ha acostumbrado. Entonces, como todo proceso de mejora, la reflexión-acción, hizo posible que los docentes replantearan sus prácticas de enseñanza y generaran conocimiento, como resultado de sus experiencias educativas.

Section 4.c Introduction

Increasingly, designers are asked to play a role in innovation processes taking place in society, either by initiating new approaches to weave social tissue, by amplifying or scaling up existing initiatives or by creating the preconditions for these initiatives to prosper. In doing so, they touch upon new meanings and values that are about to emerge in society, often increasing their visibility and moving them towards the centre of our everyday lives. For instance, a new sense of community and citizenship emerges where designers attempt to increase citizen participation in co-designing new services for their cities. As time progresses, the meaning of notions such as politics, aesthetics and citizenship shift and designers need to adapt to these changes and help to initiate or steer the adaptation process. Thus, they no longer just work to create new services: they are engaging in a cultural operation (Margolin and Margolin’s 2002 and Manzini 2016). This raises important questions such as: Are we designers always aware of the cultural implications of our work? How to take these implications into account? Are we always aware of the shift of meanings and values to which we contribute when working on social innovation? Do we deal with it critically?
 Philosophy has traditionally dealt with the interpretation of meanings and values produced throughout history. As a discipline, it can help us to better frame the new meanings and values that we designers are uncovering, (re)shaping or amplifying in society. Which meanings and values are we talking about? Can philosophy help us to critically assess these new meanings and values, framing them culturally and increase our awareness of their implications on our culture? Can philosophy help to bring more critical awareness and continuous reflection in processes of social innovation? Which philosophical traditions are better suited to look into in this sense? How can these reflections help us in our design practice aimed at social innovation? This track puts into dialogue meanings and values emerging from practices of social innovation with diverse philosophical traditions.

Innovation and Firm’s Success: The Case of Thai-Based High-Tech Firms

The purpose of this study is to determine the innovation success in Thai-based High-Tech firms with the help of leader’s behavior and organizational values with the mediating role of innovation process. This was done quantitatively. Sample size was 200 employees who worked in Thai-based high-tech firm. 5-point Likert scale was used employed for data collection and PLS-SEM version 3 was used to analyze the data. The findings of this showed that leadership role and values of the organization play very significant role in ensuring the innovation success through innovation process in Thai-based High-Tech firms.

Is Crisis the Only Way to Put Innovators in Charge in Hierarchical Firm?

The way innovators are recruited and treated within organization impacts the company’s ability to innovate. Based on literature review this research finds evidence that contrary to Schumpeterian assumptions that large companies through concentration of resources play leading role in innovation process, big hierarchical firms may fail to innovate due to recruiting patterns. Corporate hierarchy, unlike markets, tends to maintain permanent and total control of the employees and to punish and push out the least controllable. The manager has personal interest to hire and promote the most controllable employees, the ones least threatening to the manager’s status and not the most creative or innovative. This inherent feature of any hierarchy may make it unable to recruit, promote innovators and thus maintain efficient innovation process. It leads to accumulation of innovation errors and lags and to regular crises within hierarchy and of hierarchy itself due to the lack of progress and innovation. However, the crises may lead to management renewal and innovators’ promotion to decisive positions and roles. On the other hand, it means that in order to adopt and implement innovations a hierarchy requires internal or external shocks, sometimes even self-generated or exaggerated.

Innovation Personnel Behavior in the Organization

The article investigates the essence of innovation behavior and innovation readiness of personnel, identifies internal and external factors of its shaping and shows its role in the organization development. It discusses methodology of estimating innovation readiness of personnel worked out by D. Howkins, K. Rogers, A. Yu. Popova, A. A. Dubova and conducts their comparative analysis. The authors put forward their own methodology of estimating innovation readiness, which includes employees' assessment of their role in innovation processes in the organization, the situation and difficulties of introducing innovation inside the organization, trends and challenges of innovation introduction in the external environment. Results obtained during the estimation of innovation readiness of the administrative-managerial personnel of the Almetievsk central district hospital (the Republic of Tatarstan) are provided in the article. A serious factor is the availability of real possibility to put forward innovation proposals (direct communication) and a subjective assessment by top management of the population readiness to innovation technologies being introduced in the medical organization (positive responses and appraisals of the medical organization's work on the part of the population can foster shaping of the innovation behavior of personnel). We explain the importance of these factors by the direct participation of the administrative-managerial personnel in attaining goals of the program of the Russian Federation 'The Development of Public Health Service'.

El engranaje institucional como elemento del enfoque sistemático de la innovación en Latinoamérica

El enfoque sistémico de la innovación resalta la interrelación de los agentes e instituciones, sin embargo, no reconoce la complementariedad institucional. El presente trabajo tuvo como objetivo diseñar y evaluar un indicador del constructo de “engranaje institucional” como un elemento que reconoce el impacto que una institución tiene sobre otra en los procesos de innovación, así como examinar la relación existente entre el índice de engranaje institucional y el crecimiento económico. Se utilizó́ el método de regresión lineal, considerando el PIB per cápita de 17 países de América Latina en el periodo de 1980 a 2014. Se usaron variables como la tasa de actividades empresariales (TAE), que mide la población involucrada; el porcentaje de la TAE, que tiene un producto o servicio nuevo; gobierno efectivo, Estado de derecho, leyes estables; y vínculos entre universidad-empresa, siendo clasificados como productos e insumos. El diseño del indicador de engranaje institucional resultó adecuado para reconocer la complementariedad en las instituciones y su papel en los procesos de innovación, además de confirmar que los países en donde se tiene un mayor índice de engranaje institucional presentan un crecimiento económico superior. Los resultados muestran que los países latinoamericanos deben impulsar el engranaje institucional para fortalecer su sistema nacional de innovación, y así lograr un progreso económico sostenido, como el que presentan la mayoría de los países desarrollados (Unión Europea y los Estados Unidos).

The Designer as Jester: Design Practice in Innovation Contexts through the Lens of the Jester Model

Designers are trained to think in new terms and along divergent lines—they explore creative ways to challenge common assumptions. Collaboration with designers offers organizations the opportunity to adopt more flexible, creative ways of innovating. This article looks at the role of the designer as analog to that of a jester, who has a unique status relative to his (or her) superior, including the ability to playfully encourage self-reflection and propose novel directions for change. We present findings from three case studies to support an analysis of the designer’s role in innovation processes as that of a jester. The designer as jester model includes creatively contending with resistance to new methods from established cultures inside organizations. Designers’ ability to deftly demonstrate their innovation competence as they shift between tasks garners them the privileged position of the jester, including an ability to speak freely and question prevailing innovation assumptions in ways that lead to creative change.

Sectoral demand articulation: The case of emerging sensor technologies in the drinking water sector

Demand articulation plays a central role in innovation processes as it reduces uncertainties for innovating firms and offers guidance in innovation processes. Studies into demand articulation processes have mostly focused on users and user-producer interactions and paid less attention to the role of the broader environment in which users and producers are embedded. We conduct an exploratory case study into demand articulation regarding emerging micro & nanotechnology-based sensor technologies for drinking water applications. We trace the occurrence and dynamics of demand articulation processes at a sectoral level. We show that demand articulation processes at the level of a sector fulfill an important function in guiding demand articulation processes of individual and organizational actors. We develop a process model of sectoral demand articulation and discuss the relevance of sectoral contexts in explaining the direction of demand articulation processes.

Innovation in Franchising Systems—Stories of Poland and Croatia

The goal of this paper is to present innovations in franchising in the context of implementing actions in franchise systems in Croatia and Poland. Franchisors in both countries have similar approach to innovation process in their systems—they have main role. Most franchisors are encouraging franchisees to innovate and most of franchisee’s innovations are being implemented in franchise system. Relationship in innovation process is two-ways and has to be communicated as such. The aim of this research and paper was to systematically analyze process of innovation in franchise systems in Croatia and Poland. Whereas studies of innovation in franchising systems in the western world have been made already, this is one of the first studies that are looking into innovation processes in franchising in Eastern Europe especially in Croatia since there was no official research in franchising. In both countries, franchisors have the main role in innovation process in franchise systems but they are encouraging franchisees to present their ideas in order to help further growth and success of the system. The paper’s findings show importance of innovation process in franchising and how it is being managed in both countries and they contribute to the franchising literature by providing new evidence on how to deal with innovations in franchising systems. Additional research should be conducted in relation to innovation in franchising system regarding to influence of innovation to future profits, increase of employment, growth of franchising systems, etc. in both countries.

Patterns of innovation and collaboration in small and large firms

This paper explores the patterns of innovation and collaboration by using unique regional survey data on more than 600 Swedish firms. The data also include the smallest firms, which have been largely neglected in the existing literature on innovations. In the context of collaboration, however, small firms are of particular interest because external interactions and joint projects can be expected to play a very central role in innovation processes in firms where internal resources are very limited. The results show that the probability of innovation is higher among collaborating firms, yet not all types of collaborations matter. Extra-regional collaborations appear as most important in promoting firm innovation, and collaboration seems to be most favourable when the partners involved have some organizational or knowledge relatedness. Small firms, in particular, seem to gain from such extra-regional linkages.

Research on IFR of Technological Evolution Bifurcations

Idealization is a powerful tool in TRIZ, and it plays an important role in innovation processes. In the fierce market competition, in order to adopt new technology and make their product approach to ideal product, enterprises spare no effort to improve the degree of product's idealization. At the bifurcation points of product technology evolution, the ideal result that customers need changes, but because of the existence of conventional thinking and market competition, engineers always engage in designing according to the original target ideal result, finally the technology innovation opportunities are lost, so it is of great significance to study the Ideal Final Result (IFR) at the bifurcation points. According to different innovation processes of S-curves, the IFR for product's technology evolution bifurcations are divided into four classifications, Incremental Innovation Ideal Final Result(IFR_II), Radical Innovation Ideal Final Result(IFR_RI), Low-end Disruptive Innovation Ideal Final Result(IFR_LDI) and New-market Disruptive Innovation Ideal Final Result(IFR_NDI). Product's technology system consists of several technology sub-systems, correspondingly, ideal product is made up of several idealized technology sub-systems. It is the objective of product design that realizing the idealization of technology subsystem through innovation design, however, because the presence of conflicts and design constraints among technology sub-systems, the design aim for realizing ideal final results of each sub-system is almost impossible. Therefore, in designing processes, engineers always give priority to several mainstream technology sub-systems and realize their idealization first. This paper decomposes IFR into several ideal results of sub-systems based on a technical system decomposition method, researches a process of technology evolution and a changing process of sub-systems’ ideal results, determines evolution bifurcations’ direction of technology systems through the combination of the sub-systems’ ideal results and then realizes the technology forecasting at the evolution bifurcation points.

La aportación de valor en tiempos de crisis

The viewpoint of an experienced professional on the career paths in the field of library and information science is presented, addressing the trends in recent years and especially the future prospects. The current economic crisis and some of its consequences are taken into account. Given their professional, economic, cultural and social importance, knowledge management and its critical role in innovation processes are proposed as being at the core of the profession’s future.

Controversy in technology innovation: Contrasting media and expert risk perceptions of the alleged leakage at the Weyburn carbon dioxide storage demonstration project

On January 11, 2011 a local farm couple from Saskatchewan held a press conference claiming CO2 had leaked from the Weyburn project onto their land. This first public reporting of potential leakage from a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project provides an opportunity to analyze media coverage and expert perspectives to advance understanding of risk perceptions and communication of emerging energy technologies. Risk perceptions of new and emerging technologies play an influential role in innovation processes. The Weyburn project has recently been the subject of controversy as local residents alleged that CO2 leaked from the underground storage formation and affected their surface property. The public were presented with conflicting assessments of whether the CO2 was or was not leaking, and communication about the alleged leakage and its risks reflected this uncertainty. We analyze media coverage of the controversy and interviews with CCS professionals to explore differences in media and expert risk perception and framing. This study considers the influence of public controversy on perceptions of emerging technologies and provides insights on responses and influences of both the media and technology experts.