Technical Inventions Research Articles

Managerial Innovation: Rules for Successful Implementation

What conditions are necessary to support and nurture the growth of innovations when they are introduced into colleges and universities? This question has been the subject of much research in higher education [3, 7], in public schools [5, 2, 9], and a wide variety of industrial organizations [8, 11, 14]. The growing body of literature on innovations in organizations typically focuses on technological developments, defined broadly as better ways of accomplishing the organization's task. Examples include technical inventions (use of fiberglass), curriculum innovations (team teaching), and social organization of a work team (coal mining operations). In this study, however, we focused on managerial innovations instead of technical processes. We wanted to discover the patterns of behavior that supported managerial improvement efforts, and by contrast, the behavior that undercut those improvements. These improvements were attempted in forty-nine liberal arts colleges, and we observed the innovation process extensively.

Film and television.

The suggestion is made that we have lost the will to control our technology and are in danger of following passively wherever it may lead us. We have begun to equate technical invention with an apparently inevitable process of replacement. But there are other options open to us; the article describes how a small university audiovisual unit tackled the problems posed by a rapidly changing technology.

Background

In an absorbing monograph entitled Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine, Duchenne de Boulogne proposed that each emotion has its own specific facial muscle. Employing the most recent and exciting technical inventions of the mid nineteenth century, Duchenne used faradism to stimulate the facial muscles and photography to record their actions. Using electrical stimulation, he virtually dissected by this novel method the sheets of facial musculature into a number of emotional entities. By masking the stimulated area, he proved that no reflex activity occurs elsewhere in the face--an illusion hitherto accepted almost universally. Classical sculpture which purported to show a specific emotion was resculpted by Duchenne de Boulogne to show the proper use of the specific facial muscles for that emotion. The concept of emotional expression as a basis for muscle classification in the face is shown to be stimulatingly original, although not entirely valid as a scientific basis for physiological research. But the great individualist Duchenne ventured into yet another area. The first use of photography to illustrate clinical cases was in the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1862 Duchenne de Boulogne published two albums of photographs with accompanying text which appear to have been the first publicly published volumes using photographs of clinical material. The Album de photographies pathologiques contained photographs of clinical entities later linked eponymously with Duchenne, while the Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine presented scores of original prints, some including Duchenne himself in photograph.

Modeling Use Diffusion

Two differential equations modeling the diffusion of use of cultural forms are developed as alternatives to an earlier model based on exponential epochs of diffusion. Both new models are similar in that they incorporate imitation and desertion effects, but differ in the manner in which these effects operate over the course of the diffusion of use. The model which has a Gompertz curve as its integrated form fits data from 17 instances of use diffusion better than the model which has a logistic curve as its integrated form and, in addition, is more parsimonious than the original exponential epoch model. The relationship between the observed values of the parameters representing imitation and desertion is discussed in the context of the process of use diffusion. Cultural diffusion has usually been thought of as the gradual spread of a cultural form among a population. Cultural forms can mean many thingsinformation, a custom, a role, a technical or social invention, a type of violence, even a psychiatric disorder. Their cumulative spread, adoption, or incorporation into the lifeways of a people is a much studied, well documented social process (see Chapin; Coleman et al.; Davis, a,b; Dodd, a,b; Griliches; Hamblin and Miller; Hamblin et al.; Hernes; Ogburn, c; Pemberton, a,b; Rogers, a,b; Ryan and Gross). While many feel that cultural diffusion is one of the most theoretically and methodologically developed lines of research in sociology, progress comes by successive approximations as important issues emerge from the collective effort and are resolved through further theoretical analysis and empirical investigation. The issue here is whether diffusion as a quantitative use process is better modeled by Gompertz or logistic equations or as exponential epochs. *The first author worked out the Gompertz model, including the imitation law.

The efficient use of non-renewable resources

Economists since at least the time of Adam Smith have regarded the progress of human societies over time as a race between technical invention on the one hand and limited natural resources on the other. But the importance which they have attached to this problem has fluctuated. The concern which existed amongst economists in early 19th century Britain evaporated with the arrival from North America of supplies of low-priced corn, made possible by a combination of virgin lands. The issue has once again been brought to the forefront of public attention by some recent much publicised suggestions (eg Meadows, 1972, WAES 1977) that the world as a whole may be running out of supplies of a particular class of natural resources, those which are exhaustible or non-renewable. While depletion of these stocks in a physical sense seems indeniable, most contemporary economists have been inclined to accept the fragmentary empirical evidence available which suggests that there has not been depletion in an economic sense. Technical change, economies of scale, and product-factor substitution have meant that extractive commodities have over the past ICO years or so become less scarce in terms of the sacrifices required to obtain them, (Peterson & Fisher, 1977). Nevertheless, a number of economists, (Dasgupta & Heal, 1974, Pearce, 1976 and Koopmans, 1976) have in the last five years turned their attention to the question: at what rate should the non-renewable resources of a society be depleted? They have treated this question as an extension of a related question, already well established in the literature of economics: at what rate should the renewable resources of a society be accumulated, ie what is the optimal rate of investment over time? The answers traditionally given to these questions involve the maximisation of a sum of utility flows to be derived from future consumption. The principal parameters which occur in the models devised to answer such questions concern the substitutability between factors of production, the rate and character of technical change, uncertainty and utility.

Bulgaria

Abstract In a brief span of only 135 years, photography has been turned from a purely technical invention into a symbol of our time, and this itself constitutes one of the most remarkable phenomena of modern civilization. The illustration has become the full-fledged partner of literature, and photography a basic means of acquiring and recording knowledge. Photography has become a tool of science, and a means of the aesthetic exploration of reality. It spread rapidly all over the world; but its appearance in Bulgaria was greatly delayed because the Bulgarian people were still under Ottoman domination and some 39 years since its invention had passed before liberation finally came.

Poetry therapy: A tool to foster creativity

As we cram academic and technical knowledge into our heads, other facets of ourselves begin to diminish. As we conform to pressures to learn, to perform, to produce. we lose touch with our own self-awareness and our own creativity. This being the case, how then can we recreate our own creativity? One method of fostering that creativity there are many other methods as well could be through the medium of poetry within a poetry therapy group. Poetry therapy is essentially this: within a group of approximately six to ten people. poems are read aloud. discussed. experienced and often written in relation to the participant’s own individual feelings. The poems act as catalysts to self-awareness and often as change agents. To date. this therapy has been used in the treatment of such problems as alcoholism. drug addiction. and other mental and emotional difficulties. For the future. poetry therapy holds the promise of helping many people to get back in touch with their own forgotten creativity. This paper will examine and compare the relationships between poetry therapy and two methodologies of creativity training i.e. creative problem solving and the synectics method of creativity training. It will attempt to illustrate that the poem and the poetry therapy group inadvertently touch upon the methods and elements of creativity training. Thus, if these elements are known, poetry therapy could be further developed as a stronger tool for fostering creativity within the emotionally healthy or “normal” individual. There are many definitions of creativity. Sidney Parnes (director of the Creative Problem Solving Institute) sa\‘s creativity is “perceiving new and relevant meanings and relationships in what we know and what we attend to. It is making new connections, new metaphors. It is spinning our mental kaleidoscopes so that we formulate many new and varied patterns (Creativity: Unlocking Human Potential, p. 1). Arthur Koestler. novelist and essayist. says that creativity is “an actualization of surplus potentials.” W.J.J. Gordon, founder of Synectics, defines creativity as “the mental activity in problem stating and problem solving situations where artistic or technical inventions are the result” (Svnectics, 1961). Morris Stein, author of two volumes entitled Stimulating Creativit?, (1973 and 1975) says. “Creativity is a process that results in a novel work that is accepted as useful, tenable, or satisfying by a significant group of people at some point in time” (p. vii; vol. 2). In essence then, creativity is a process. And this process has elements that directly apply to the process of poetry therapy. Sidney Parnes stresses that the primary way to foster creative behavior is “to facilitate the effective use of a person’s associative abilities.” Parnes suggests two general ways for increasing these abilities: (I ) the individual can feed his brain the necessary fuel for it to function at a stronger capacity: (2) the individual should attempt to remove the brakes the emotional brakes that prevent the associative mechanisms from working (Parnes, Creative Behavior Guidebook, 1967. p. 63). The “fuel to feed the individual’s brain” is provided within the poetry therapy workshop by the poetry, the participants’ active discussions, and by the forced relationship concept which is stressed in creaEivity training programs.

Economic Problems of Scientific-Technical Progress

Scientific and technical progress is the basic means for further increasing the effectiveness of social production in the age of developed socialism. The level of science, the significance of new scientific and technical developments and inventions, and the rate of their adoption in production and their diffusion determine a country's economic potential. Science becomes a direct productive force and the decisive factor in the development of a socialist economy.

Hans Spemann and the organizer concept.

In his autobiography2 (p. 171), Spemann says: ‘My strongest inclination and talents are a combination of inquiry into general problems (allgemeine Fragestellung) and technical invention.’ He achieved what he did by bringing these inclinations and talents to their fullest development. Those who are not familiar with the ‘metier’ of the experimental scientist can hardly realize how much attention to minute details and mere drudgery go into experimental work. Spemann had his full share, but no matter how painstaking the labors, the findings were never more than a few steps away from the problem. And it is true that he derived an extraordinary enjoyment and gratification from his very considerable manual skill. He could spend hours playing with glass tubing and rods over the Bunsen — or microburner, preparing instruments for his microsurgery. After his retirement, he writes in a letter to me (8 July 1937): ‘At the moment my passion for playing (with instruments) celebrates orgies, and I feel transferred back to the times when I invented the glass needle technique; the same oblivion of time; the same curiosity and tension and “herzklopfende Seligkeit”.’

Hobbes and Existentialism: Some Affinities

From the distant shores of Stuart England Thomas Hobbes still speaks to us in a strangely familiar and captivating idiom. Having traversed the rugged expanse of three centuries, some of his words are obviously muffled and obscure, but whatever the obstacles, our generation seems willing to strain in order to perceive more clearly the subtle inflections of this voice. During the past decade the literature devoted to Hobbes has expanded rapidly both in volume and in breadth of focus, covering the most diverse topics of his natural and civil philosophy. The reasons for this preoccupation are complex and elusive. To some extent the preoccupation may stem from the fact that Hobbes stood at the beginning of various intellectual and social trends that have culminated or have been eclipsed in our own time. According to Crawford Macpherson, Hobbes was one of the first advocates of possessive individualism, an anthropological doctrine that concentrated on the accumulation and protection of property as man's primary motives and became a cornerstone of the market economy and modern industrial society. Taking a broader view, Jurgen Habermas identified IHobbes as one of the ancestors of technological rationalism, a rationalism that in its combination of rigorous analysis and technical invention continues to animate the revolution of our age.' These and similar interpretations undoubtedly possess great plausibility and persuasiveness, but they hardly tell the entire story. Neither Hobbes's vocabulary nor our own seems restricted to this range of discourse. While attractive to the scientific mentality of a technological era, Hobbes's voice also reaches us on a different level of frequency-the level of basic

The University Library: Functions and Opportunities

COMPUTERS are, in principle, the same as any other technical invention when it comes to practical applications. They either serve the purpose or they do not. We use typewriters rather than pens because they are faster, provide a better and more legible copy, allow additional copies to be made without extra labour, are more economical in paper, and so on. There are some purposes for which none of these factors is valid, and for these purposes we still write rather than type.

The Sources of Increased Efficiency: A Study of DuPont Rayon Plants

An extraordinary opportunity offered by the Du Pont Company gave Professor Hollander free access both to all detailed cost and much investment data related to rayon manufacture at a number of plants, covering a period of thirty years and to a wide range of informed personnel and officers. These data enabled Professor Hollander to make an unprecedented study of a large industrial firm for the purpose of measuring the contribution of various sources of improvement to increased efficiency. From the mass of information available, he has selected sound technical details and concepts, excluded all irrelevant material, and presented a carefully organized case study showing how technical change accounts for a very high proportion of the increases in productivity. Specifically, this information includes descriptions of the contributions of various types of technical change to production cost reductions, quantitative estimates of the contributions of technical change and economies of scale to increased efficiency, and analyses of the relation between technical change and investment and of the sources of new technology. The microeconomic approach is related to certain macrostudies of productivity increase, and several policy implications are drawn. This study should be of great interest to a wide audience including economists, economic historians, and technologists. All those concerned with the problems of economic growth, industrial structure, patent protection, technical invention, research and development, and the general progress of civilian industrial technology will find this book a valuable addition to their libraries.

Scientific Change. Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present. Alistair C. Crombie

<i>Scientific Change. Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present</i>. Alistair C. Crombie

Scientific Change: Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present (Symposium on the History of Science, University of Oxford, 9-15 July 1961

Scientific Change: Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present (Symposium on the History of Science, University of Oxford, 9-15 July 1961

Scientific Change: Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present. Symposium on the History of Science, University of Oxford 9-15 July, 1961

Scientific Change: Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present. Symposium on the History of Science, University of Oxford 9-15 July, 1961

Scientific change: historical studies in the intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present. Symposium on the History of Science, University of Oxford 9–15 July, 1961. Edited by &lt;italic&gt;A. C. Crombie&lt;/italic&gt;. (New York: Basic Books. 1963. Pp. xii, 896. $17.50.)

Scientific change: historical studies in the intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present. Symposium on the History of Science, University of Oxford 9–15 July, 1961. Edited by &lt;italic&gt;A. C. Crombie&lt;/italic&gt;. (New York: Basic Books. 1963. Pp. xii, 896. $17.50.)

Historians in Debate

Scientific Change Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present. Edited by A. C. Crombie. (Symposium on the History of Science, University of Oxford, 9–15 July 1961.) Pp. xii + 896. (London: Heinemann Educational Books, Ltd., 1963.) 105s. net.

Scientific Change: Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present

Scientific Change: Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present

Scientific Change: Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present. Symposium on the History of Science, University of Oxford 9-15 July 1961.

To maintain this international symposium within limits, Dr. Crombie as director tried to keep to a specific theme, namely, the conditions which were responsible for scientific and technical change. Unfortunately, the participants interpreted this much too loosely, so that the collection of studies does not have nearly the unity which a more rigorous direction might have enforced. Twenty-nine communications are divided into major areas, including scientific thinking in antiquity, Chinese science, science and technology in the Middle Ages, and problems in the sociology of science. In modern science, separate parts deal with physical and biological discoveries, and organization of science and technology. As in most congresses, there is fragmentation of topics, and not very much common meeting ground. Some studies conform to the over-all plan, others do not. Of special interest, and serving as an example of effective writing, we can mention specifically the contribution of Edelstein, on motives and

Reviews

Journal Article Reviews Get access P. M. HANDOVER, Printing in London from 1476 to Modem Times. Competitive Practice and Technical Invention in the Trade of Book and Bible Printing, Periodical Production, Jobbing, &c. George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London, 1960. Pp. 224, 15 plates and 59 figures. 8½×5½ in. 28s. ROY STOKES ROY STOKES Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Library, Volume s5-XVII, Issue 3, September 1962, Pages 268–269, https://doi.org/10.1093/library/s5-XVII.3.268 Published: 01 September 1962