129,237 research outputs found

    Value innovation modelling: Design thinking as a tool for business analysis and strategy

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    This paper explores the use of multiple perspective problem framing (English 2008) as a tool to reveal hidden value and commercial opportunity for business. Creative thinking involves the interrelationship of parameters held open and fluid within the cognitive span of the creative mind. The recognition of new associations can create new value that can lead to innovation in designed products, intellectual property and business strategy. The ‘Ideas-lab’ process is based on the proposition that a company’s capacity for innovation is dependent on the way the business is able to see its problems and opportunities. In this process the attributes of a company and the experience of the researchers are considered as the parameters of a design problem. It is therefore important to acknowledge the commercial experience of the project researchers, all of whom have a proven track record in helping businesses develop, exploit and protect their know how. Semi structured interviews were carried out with key individuals in 34 companies. The resulting data was assessed on a company-by-company basis through a process of multiple perspective problem framing, enabling key nodes, patterns and relationships to be identified and explored. A ‘Cornerstones of Innovation’ report was prepared to inform each company of the observations made by the researchers. The paper describes the methods adopted and summarises the feedback from participating companies. Case studies are highlighted to demonstrate ways in which the process influenced the actions of particular businesses, and the commercial outcomes that resulted. Finally the researchers reflect on the structure of the Ideas-lab process

    Remote Tracking via Encoded Information for Nonlinear Systems

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    The problem addressed in this paper is to control a plant so as to have its output tracking (a family of) reference commands generated at a remote location and transmitted through a communication channel of finite capacity. The uncertainty due to the presence of the communication channel is counteracted by a suitable choice of the parameters of the regulator

    A theoretical view on concept mapping

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    Auto‐monitoring is the pivotal concept in understanding the operation of concept maps, which have been used to help learners make sense of their study and plan learning activities. Central to auto‐monitoring is the idea of a ‘learning arena’ where individuals can manipulate concept representations and engage in the processes of checking, resolving and confirming understandings. The learner is assisted by familiar metaphors (for example, networks) and the possibility of thinking ‘on action’ while ‘in action’. This paper discusses these concepts, and concludes by arguing that maps are part of the process of learning rather than a manifestation of learning itself. Auto‐monitoring is suggested as an appropriate term to describe the process of engaging in the learning arena

    A Micro-Level View on Knowledge Co-Creation Through University-Industry Collaboration in a Multi-National Corporation

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    Purpose: Technology transfer (TT) in industry to university collaboration (UIC) literature focuses primarily on a macro view within an SME environment. While these discussions are important to establish the significance of encouraging UIC’s as the value is important to both parties, there is a need for further research at a micro level to help understand key approaches to ensuring the success of the TT. By looking at how value created from TT for a multi-national corporation (MNC) with a project based within a single subsidiary, this research effectively looks at the issue from both a SME level (the subsidiary independently) and a MNC level. Design/Methodology/Approach: The research uses a longitudinal knowledge transfer partnership and action research to form a case study of Parker Hannifin’s Gas Separation and Filtration Europe, Middle East and Africa (GSFE) division. Findings: The research highlights the key areas to focus on in ensuring a successful TT within an UIC such as: once identifying the gap that a UIC is filling in the company, identifying internal barriers before the project starts; education of why change is necessary and then using knowledge experts to educate on the new processes being introduced and finally; incorporation of a full range of personnel, not just those directly involved in the day-to-day of the UIC. Research limitations/implications: As a case study, further research is required to make the results more generalisable. One way to do this would be to evaluate previous successful and unsuccessful UIC's and determine if the success criteria identified were present in these programmes. Practical implications: There are three critical points that can be taken away from this research and applied to any company looking to use UIC for TT and value co-creation. Education, external knowledge experts and business wide inclusion were highlighted in the findings as being potentially critical turning points and need to be addressed for successful TT. Social implications: Successful UIC’s further encourage investment in such programmes which has greater societal benefits. Not only can we see greater leaps in industry through better, more specific knowledge being transferred from the university, the industry knowledge fed into universities helps to guide research and teachings. Originality/value: The micro level view created by action research based from the industry partner perspective adds another level of importance as the ‘how’ for overcoming barriers is clearly addressed. Furthermore, the research looks at how a multi-national corporation can have value added through UIC's within subsidiaries which often is not addressed in the literature

    Service Design Against Organised Crime

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    This paper proposes benefits of using service design against organised crime. As a vehicle to this discussion, the focus is an anti-child-trafficking project at Northumbria University in the UK, involving its multidisciplinary Northumbria Crime Prevention Network. The last 10 years have shown increasing evidence of people trafficking, internationally (DoS, 2010), generally for the purposes of illegal labour and/or sex. A significant fraction of those who are trafficked are children. The majority of these children are in their mid-teens, but some are as young as five years old. The C4 persona-based critical design process, (Hilton, 2008), is proposed to strategically enable a service design approach to counter organised crime, by first developing the required criminal personas in order to use their competitive perspectives in critical review of the preventative initiatives. Opportunities from such a service design approach, to child trafficking for example would include new means of: interruption or redirection of child trafficking services so that these children end up in legitimate care; also the proposition of considering new opportunities and improvements in child trafficking service routes and processes as a means of second guessing how and where Recruiters, Transporters, and Exploiters, (Van Dijck, 2005), might next be found operating, and then through border and security agencies successfully countered

    Information display from board wargame for marketing strategy identification

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    Marketing warfare is an alternative solution for a company to defend itself or to win market parts. This approach presents consumer spirit as a battleground where companies make military maneuvers to confront each other. But a problem subsists, how make a link between market and battle or war? May be a solution exists: business wargames. But now, they are too complex or only role playing oriented without any solution to map battles. However, before being business wargames, wargames were developed to propose visual solutions to recreate a specific war situation. Now, wargames for civilians exist, with a particular kind: board wargames, which we found very interesting for information display. In this paper, we develop a methodology to apply a board wargame tool for a market situation. This methodology contributes to creative competitive intelligence (or creative watch) a new kind of competitive intelligence, in the sense it participates to information discovery that directly contributes to the creation and innovation process.intelligence économique, veille stratégique, veille concurrentielle, veille marché, veille créative, veille des innovations, veille des créations, visualisation d'information, innovation, jeu de guerre, wargame, war game, jeu sérieux // creative intelligence, strategic intelligence, competitive intelligence, economic intelligence, market intelligence, business intelligence, information visualization, wargaming, wargame, war game, marketing warfare, innovation, watch, serious game, serious gaming, creative competitive intelligence

    Non-local control in the conduction coefficients: well posedness and convergence to the local limit

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    We consider a problem of optimal distribution of conductivities in a system governed by a non-local diffusion law. The problem stems from applications in optimal design and more specifically topology optimization. We propose a novel parametrization of non-local material properties. With this parametrization the non-local diffusion law in the limit of vanishing non-local interaction horizons converges to the famous and ubiquitously used generalized Laplacian with SIMP (Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization) material model. The optimal control problem for the limiting local model is typically ill-posed and does not attain its infimum without additional regularization. Surprisingly, its non-local counterpart attains its global minima in many practical situations, as we demonstrate in this work. In spite of this qualitatively different behaviour, we are able to partially characterize the relationship between the non-local and the local optimal control problems. We also complement our theoretical findings with numerical examples, which illustrate the viability of our approach to optimal design practitioners
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