Spread Of Innovations Research Articles

SQUIRE-EDU (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence in Education): Publication Guidelines for Educational Improvement.

The SQUIRE 2.0 (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence) guidelines were published in 2015 to increase the completeness, precision, and transparency of published reports about efforts to improve the safety, value, and quality of health care. The principles and methods applied in work to improve health care are often applied in educational improvement as well. In 2016, a group was convened to develop an extension to SQUIRE that would meet the needs of the education community. This article describes the development of the SQUIRE-EDU extension over a three-year period and its key components. SQUIRE-EDU was developed using an international, interprofessional advisory group and face-to-face meeting to draft initial guidelines; pilot testing of a draft version with nine authors; and further revisions from the advisory panel with a public comment period. SQUIRE-EDU emphasizes three key components that define what is necessary in systematic efforts to improve the quality and value of health professions education. These are a description of the local educational gap; consideration of the impacts of educational improvement to patients, families, communities, and the health care system; and the fidelity of the iterations of the intervention. SQUIRE-EDU is intended for the many and complex range of methods used to improve education and education systems. These guidelines are projected to increase and standardize the sharing and spread of iterative innovations that have the potential to advance pedagogy and occur in specific contexts in health professions education.

Persistent spatial patterns of interacting contagions.

The spread of infectious diseases, rumors, fashions, and innovations are complex contagion processes, embedded in network and spatial contexts. While the studies in the former context are intensively expanded, the latter remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we investigate the pattern formation of an interacting contagion, where two infections, A and B, interact with each other and diffuse simultaneously in space. The contagion process for each follows the classical susceptible-infected-susceptible kinetics, and their interaction introduces a potential change in the secondary infection propensity compared to the baseline reproduction number . We show that the nontrivial spatial infection patterns arise when the susceptible individuals move faster than the infected and the interaction between the two infections is neither too competitive nor too cooperative. Interestingly, the system exhibits pattern hysteresis phenomena, i.e., quite different parameter regions for patterns exist in the direction of increasing or decreasing . Decreasing reveals remarkable enhancement in contagion prevalence, meaning that the eradication becomes difficult compared to the single-infection or coinfection without space. Linearization analysis supports our observations, and we have identified the required elements and dynamical mechanism, which suggests that these patterns are essentially Turing patterns. Our work thus reveals new complexities in interacting contagions and paves the way for further investigation because of its relevance to both biological and social contexts.

Global oil traffic network and diffusion of influence among ports using real time data

This paper seeks to shed light on how ports spread their influence through propagatory activation of other ports in the global oil traffic network from 2009 to 2016. Using a modified linear threshold model, the paper does not attempt to identify a few fixed ports that served as “seeds” for propagation and influence maximization. Instead it identifies active seed port hubs via their diffusion patterns and the number of ports in the networks that become influenced as a result. The computations show that diffusion is highly uneven but Rotterdam, Antwerp and Singapore emerged as the three most influential seed ports particularly in 2013 and 2016. Whereas over half of the ports in the networks were able to influence just one other port, Rotterdam and Antwerp influenced ports in the entire network. Singapore's spread of influence is smaller but its activation rate is more rapid because the port-city's influence tends to be much more regionally confined. Rotterdam's propagation occurs in fewer stages than Antwerp's suggesting that information and innovation spread more readily from the former city-port. Taken together, the analysis points to the above three city-ports as the most effective hubs for dissemination of information in the oil, including tanker, industry.

Methodological approaches to global value chains analysis

The article is devoted to overview of methodological approaches to the analysis of the global value chains. Value chain is a full range of activities which is done by firm or employees in order to bring a product from its conception to its end use. This also includes activities such as design, production, marketing, distribution and support to the final consumer. Global value chains (GVC) involve different type of firm from different countries in such activities. The paper emphasizes that this research topic is interdisciplinary. Topics in GVC literature include variety of aspects: impact of globalization on employment, horizontal and vertical links between enterprises in the chain, governance structure of organizing international production networks, supply and income distribution, spread of innovation and technology, firms’ upgrading etc. Generally, A. Morrison, C. Pietrobelli and R. Rabellotti have identified two different “schools” or approaches within the broad GVC literature: the internationalist approach and the industrialist approach. Typology of global value chains is quite developed topic. Such types as market type, modular type, relational type, captive type, hierarchy type of governance have been distinguished and described by foreign researches. Elements of modernization processes of the value chain have been highlighted. Approaches to upgrading of value added production can be considered as upgrading of products (and packaging), upgrading of processes, functional upgrading, inter-sectoral upgrading. Also concept of upgrading can relate to upgrading of value chain-network structure and upgrading of governance structures. The topic of barriers for integration in global value chains for developing countries is crucial. There are several factors affecting developing country competitiveness in GVCs: productive capacity, infrastructure and service, business environment, trade and investment policy, industry institutionalization. The main conclusions emerging from analytical overview presented in this article are that various approaches to GVCs analysis exist and that the choice of particular approach should be based on specific research topic which is investigated as well as data sources (e.g. firms’ business record, input-output tables, interviews with enterprises, business association, government officers etc).

Массовая речевая культура в аспекте медиатизации социальных коммуникаций

Purpose. The article is dedicated to the study of mass speech culture as demonstration of a broad trend to social communications mediatization. Mass speech culture is considered to be the standards of verbal communication used by a number of people regardless of their status and social role in public communication and in everyday life. The author defines mass culture of Russian speech as elements of discursive practices accepted as a social standard by the majority of Russian speakers. One the one hand, mass speech culture mediatization manifests itself by the fact that patterns of verbal behavior and linguistic innovations are actively communicated and replicated in the mass media and social networks. On the other hand, modern media themselves extensively collaborate with socio-cultural practices and form the background for communication and language norms change. Results. The research is aimed at three types of mass speech culture manifestation that have cause-and-effect relationship with mediatization procedures. They are mass interpretation of the speech standard, subject-matter presuppositions / restrictions and a fast-paced spread of speech innovations. Essential features of mass speech culture are concluded with reference to the survey conducted among philologists and the representative selection of “Medialogy” database. Mass speech culture is characterized by vague conception of the speech standard, extension of topics admitted in public communication, virus spread of innovations and reduced introspection towards them. It can be viewed as modern media practices influence as well as their forming factors. Conclusion. Mediatization concept implementation for reasoning the interconnections between mass media development and mass speech culture changes within the interdisciplinary framework can be regarded as the research prospect by the author.

Unleashing workplace innovation in Scotland

The devolution of certain powers from the UK to an elected Scottish Parliament has opened a different trajectory for economic development and industrial policy in Scotland. Low productivity is a problem prevalent throughout the UK, but Scotland is unique in addressing it through a portfolio of measures designed to enhance the spread of workplace innovation. This article is based on multiple cases from a pilot programme which supported workplace innovation in cohorts of companies representing diverse sectors and sizes. It reports a wide range of successful outcomes for the participating companies and their employees, as well as lessons for the design of future programmes.

Sustainable Supply Chain and Innovation: A Review of the Recent Literature

Increasingly, the effects of supply chains on environmental issues have been a focal point in discussions involving stakeholders, authorities, and customers. The aim of this paper is to inspect how innovation and sustainability are integrated into the wider context of the supply chains. To this end, a systematic literature review was carried out with a particular focus on papers published in recent years (2015–2017) so as to continue from a previous review on the sustainable supply chain innovation topic covering the time span of 1996–2014. The descriptive aspects of the published papers are firstly examined, i.e., the year of publication, journal, research methodology, industry field and country of the study, followed by the thematic ones, i.e., key themes of the innovation process, the types of innovation found, their newness, dimensions, and main theories that emerged. The analysis shows an upward trend of literature in numerical terms and a wider spread of sustainable innovations. Additionally, the research highlights further areas of research that are deserving of attention. These areas include analyses of specific industrial sectors which have been less covered in the published literature; research activities in the less developed countries; more attention on the social dimension of sustainability; a more general contribution from some nations that turned out to be less productive or even inactive on the sustainable supply chain innovation topic. Finally, a framework is developed which could constitute the basis for further developments and research on this issue.

Competition and dual users in complex contagion processes

We study the competition of two spreading entities, for example innovations, in complex contagion processes in complex networks. We develop an analytical framework and examine the role of dual users, i.e. agents using both technologies. Searching for the spreading transition of the new innovation and the extinction transition of a preexisting one, we identify different phases depending on network mean degree, prevalence of preexisting technology, and thresholds of the contagion process. Competition with the preexisting technology effectively suppresses the spread of the new innovation, but it also allows for phases of coexistence. The existence of dual users largely modifies the transient dynamics creating new phases that promote the spread of a new innovation and extinction of a preexisting one. It enables the global spread of the new innovation even if the old one has the first-mover advantage.

EUROPEAN TENDENCIES OF INNOVATIVE DEVELOPMENT FOR ENERGY SECTOR AND FINAL ENERGY CONSUMPTION

In order to identify the EU tendencies and priorities a systematic study of the changes that occurred during recent years in the EU energy policy and energy innovation policy has been conducted. The characteristic of modern tendencies, goals, main objectives and directions of innovative development in the energy sector and the areas of final energy consumption of the EU is given. An informational model on the dynamics of forming the political and strategic factors, which found direction of innovative development in the energy sector of the EU, has been constructed. The peculiarities of innovative processes connected with functioning the energy business, energy markets and energy efficient technologies market as well as the priorities of innovative development in the areas of energy production, transmission, distribution and consumption are considered. The importance of the transition in the energy sector to service-oriented business models that are more marketable in the context of transforming the energy industry and energy markets is noted. The tendencies of changes in the European energy regulatory environment, which took place as a result of the development and strengthening the commercialization of innovations in the conditions of energy transition and changes in the European energy landscape, are presented. The characteristic of the strategic priorities and conditions necessary to strengthen the innovative development and the spread of energy innovation in Ukraine in the long-term perspective is given.

Active and passive diffusion processes in complex networks

Ideas, information, viruses: all of them, with their mechanisms, spread over the complex social information, viruses: all tissues described by our interpersonal relations. Usually, to simulate and understand the unfolding of such complex phenomena are used general mathematical models; these models act agnostically from the object of which they simulate the diffusion, thus considering spreading of virus, ideas and innovations alike. Indeed, such degree of abstraction makes it easier to define a standard set of tools that can be applied to heterogeneous contexts; however, it can also lead to biased, incorrect, simulation outcomes. In this work we introduce the concepts of active and passive diffusion to discriminate the degree in which individuals choice affect the overall spreading of content over a social graph. Moving from the analysis of a well-known passive diffusion schema, the Threshold model (that can be used to model peer-pressure related processes), we introduce two novel approaches whose aim is to provide active and mixed schemas applicable in the context of innovations/ideas diffusion simulation.Our analysis, performed both in synthetic and real-world data, underline that the adoption of exclusively passive/active models leads to conflicting results, thus highlighting the need of mixed approaches to capture the real complexity of the simulated system better.

Empowerment and Tech Adoption: Introducing the Treadle Pump Triggers Farmers’ Innovation in Eastern Ethiopia

In 2013, thirty-eight treadle pumps (TPs) were installed as low-cost technology introduction for small-scale irrigation in eastern Ethiopia. This pilot project also trained six farmers on tube well excavation, as well as the installation and maintenance of pumps. In June 2015, researchers visited nine of the thirty-eight TP villages and found only two TPs functioning as originally installed. The rest were replaced with a new technology developed by the trained farmers. Farmers, empowered by training, gained more control in developing technology options tailored to local needs and conditions of their communities. Adopters of the new technology stated that the limited water output and high labor demand of the conventional TP did not optimally fulfil their irrigation water requirements. The new technology had spread quickly to more than one hundred households due to three key factors. First, farmers’ innovative modifications of the initial excavation technique addressed the discharge limitations of the conventional TP by excavating boreholes with wider diameter. Second, local ownership of the new technology, including skills used in well drilling and manufacturing excavation implements, made the modified irrigation technology affordable and accessible to the majority of households. Third, this innovation spread organically without any external support, confirming its sustainability.

COGNITIVE ACTIVITY OF STUDENTS UNDER CONDITIONS OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Technological changes in science, economics and society lead to social, political and cultural changes. Changes in education, among other things, cause some contradictions: between the emergence of the latest technology, technology and the new generation of means for training, management and scientific research and late response of education managers to the choice, implementation and spread of innovation; between the need to develop a modern educational environment and the conservatism of leaders and pedagogical staff in the period of innovation transformations. Based on the computer-technology platform of modern education, which acquires characteristics of open, there is a transformation of traditional learning environment into the environment of computer-mediate communication. This environment is characterized by use of distributed educational resources and infrastructures to support educational communities of different types. We consider cognitive activity as an element of the overall learning process, which is a targeted, systematically organized, managed externally or students’ individual interaction with the surrounding reality, the result of which is the mastery of scholarly knowledge and work methods at the level of reproduction or creativity. In the process of learning, cognition gets clear form in a special and unique to the person educational and cognitive activity, or learning. The effectiveness of educational and cognitive activity of students in particular is determined by the new paradigm of education of the information society. The entire toolkit is changed, that allow evaluating and controlling educational and cognitive activity. ICT and ICN form new solutions that can influence basic processes in the educational system: formation and development of competencies, recording achievements, learning quality assessment, creating a positive motivation and promoting individual educational and cognitive activities. The article deals with research results of problems of organization of educational and cognitive students’ activity and formation of their competencies in the context of transformational changes in the educational process caused by presentation of new technologies.

The Role and the Future of Deliberative Mini-publics: A Citizen Perspective

The last decades have witnessed a spread of democratic innovations. Chief among them are deliberative mini-publics that gather randomly selected citizens to discuss salient public issues with the aim of generating some kind of ‘uptake’ in the broader political system. Political theorists have addressed the pros and cons of such innovations. Nevertheless, little is known about the citizens’ perspective on such mini-publics and on their role in the political system. Drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews, this article scrutinizes participants’ expectations. Findings show that they are motivated by internal expectations (desire of sociability, learning, and civic duty) and external expectations (presence and voice). Participants fundamentally perceive mini publics as a way to enrich the linkage between voters and their representatives, without forsaking the logic of electoral delegation. This work suggests that citizens may have complex and evolving conceptions of democracy.

An exploration of smart city approaches by international ICT firms

As part of the growing interest in cities to address persistent sustainability issues in society, ‘smart cities’ have increasingly become a ubiquitous phenomenon globally. For multinational enterprises (MNEs), this has provided opportunities to develop and market technological innovations to facilitate the creation of smart cities, given that the deployment of information and communication technology (ICT) is commonly considered to be a central tenet of smart cities. This paper explores the strategic approaches of three MNEs from the ICT industry (IBM, Cisco, and Accenture) as suppliers of ‘smart city technologies’, rooted in an international business perspective. Based on qualitative data collected from semi-structured interviews and documentation on firm activities related to smart cities, our study offers two contributions. First, the empirical analysis provides insight into how MNEs have developed resources and capabilities in the smart city realm from a multitude of smart city engagements globally, and shows how firm-specific strategies and programmes for smart cities (IBM Smarter Cities, Cisco Smart + Connected Communities, and Accenture Intelligent Cities) have facilitated this process. Second, it provides an actor-centric perspective on the (potential) role of business in the emergence and spread of technological innovations for urban development, helping to address the need for further insights into (smart) cities and stakeholder involvement in sustainability transitions.

How Households Adopt Sustainable Innovations? A Free Decision Enforced by Others

Households play a crucial role in the transition of the energy system. They can make major contributions to sustainable development by adopting “green” innovations since such actions have a substantial impact on overall energy consumption. Theory suggests that innovations are first adopted by persons with specific dispositions, i.e., people with a high level of technical interest, relevant knowledge, and proenvironmental orientation. As an innovation spreads, early adopters yield social influences on others encouraging them to adopt, too. In theory, such effects should be found regardless of the nature of the innovation. We compared three green investments (residential insulation, solar thermal energy systems, and e-cars) at different diffusion stages in Germany. In three experiments, decision-makers in households were asked for their willingness to adopt the innovations; their dispositions and perceived social influences were measured in questionnaires. Social influences were found to affect all innovation adoptions while dispositions showed specific effects: technical interest was found to affect e-car and solar thermal energy adoptions; a proenvironmental value orientation only affected residential insulation. We conclude that it is worthwhile to shape policy measures to the innovation characteristics. However, social influences should always be taken in account.

The Balanced Scorecard and virus-based change

The dominant perspective describing the creation and spread of management innovations has been that of management fads and fashion (Abrahamson, 1991; 1996). The fashion perspective is consistent with the diffusion approach, which suggests that management fashion setters will create and disseminate new management ideas that are then willingly adopted by managers. An alternate perspective involves the virus metaphor (Rovik, 2011). Virus-based change recognizes the need for organizational receptivity to new management ideas, but also for local agency to allow infection, and facilitate reproduction and spread of the virus. Using a longitudinal case study, we trace the adoption of the Balanced Scorecard by a professional service firm (EES Consulting), which followed a trajectory more consistent with that of viral change. Rather than blindly adopting the Scorecard as a complete solution to promote strategic and cultural change, EES Consulting customized its version of the Scorecard and allowed time (incubation) for the innovation to take hold.

Human mobility and innovation spreading in ancient times: a stochastic agent-based simulation approach

Human mobility always had a great influence on the spreading of cultural, social and technological ideas. Developing realistic models that allow for a better understanding, prediction and control of such coupled processes has gained a lot of attention in recent years. However, the modeling of spreading processes that happened in ancient times faces the additional challenge that available knowledge and data is often limited and sparse. In this paper, we present a new agent-based model for the spreading of innovations in the ancient world that is governed by human movements. Our model considers the diffusion of innovations on a spatial network that is changing in time, as the agents are changing their positions. Additionally, we propose a novel stochastic simulation approach to produce spatio-temporal realizations of the spreading process that are instructive for studying its dynamical properties and exploring how different influences affect its speed and spatial evolution.

DIGITAL DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION: PARADOX or CONCEPTUAL DISTORTION?

Cultures that incorporate new knowledge produced elsewhere in the industrial or academic environment need rethink the basic elements of knowledge they incorporate, or else they may incur huge conceptual distortions or even superficial absorption, without intrinsic value. This seems to be the case of concept on disruptive innovation. It’s conceptual purposes seem to be distorted as disruptive innovation spreads through academia and industry. The main objective of this research is to identify the conceptual premises of disruptive innovation in selected cases of digital disruptive innovation, to characterize an epistemology meaning to it. The methodology is quantitative. We used the CAPES journal base and Publish or Perish, evaluating the articles and performing a textual scan with the Iramuteq software. The main results indicated that there are two clusters of concepts of disruptive innovation, one from the context of established companies and another from the context of new companies, originated as result of digital transformations. Conclusions lead to same conceptual logic in both concepts. However, conceptual logic based on events of established companies, is epistemologically more dogmatic than the one that considers disruptive innovation in the context of digital companies, which is more typically perspectivist.

The global-local tension in medical education: turning 'think global, act local' on its head?

Medical education has not been immune from forces for globalisation in the contemporary world. At the same time the social accountability of medical schools in addressing local health priorities has been emphasised. This paper explores the global-local tension in medical education through a careful selection of key overview papers. Globalisation in medical education has taken two main forms: economic and altruistic. The former includes licensing curricula, recruiting internationally and establishing 'offshore' schools or campuses. Altruistic collaborations focus on the spread of learning and educational innovations. Both forms bring benefits but have been subject to critique for their differential impact and focus on educational inputs rather than outputs. Social accountability requires medical schools to direct their activities to local priorities and to serving local health systems. Adoption of the principles of social accountability compels all medical schools to ask questions of their educational programmes and graduate outcomes. However, these are globally interdependent questions and are the intent of some well-known social accountability collaborations. It is naïve to think that adoption of a social accountability agenda by all medical schools would necessarily reduce global health inequity. A recent Australian example shows that workforce maldistribution, for example, is resistant to even high-level intervention. It is yet too early to fully accept that 'think global, act local can be turned on its head'. There is much research to be carried out, particularly on the outcomes and impacts of medical education. Establishing cause and effect is a challenge, as is determining whether globalisation or localisation can contribute to greater global health equity. If we are ever to resolve the global-local tension in medical education, we need more evidence on the outcomes of what we do, whether globally or locally inspired.

Between company and network practices: mirroring innovative ideas

ABSTRACTResearch has demonstrated the importance of business networks for innovation. Recent studies on innovation contribute to a better understanding of internal network processes and how network members can use their network position to benefit from these processes. However, knowledge about what role business network innovation plays in the organisations of network members is lacking. The aim of this study is to increase understanding of how business network innovation emerges and spreads to network members. It is suggested to focus on the practices of member companies in order to understand how network innovation changes these practices. Two case studies in the tourism sector are used in this study to develop Michel Foucault’s concept of mirroring to explain how network innovation emerges and spreads from the network to companies. The results suggest that owing to its formative, directional, long-term and dynamic nature, the mirroring process can better capture the network–company context than other perspectives on the spread of innovation.