6,110 research outputs found

    On Factors explaining Organisational Innovation and its Effects

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    This paper demonstrates how various factors influence the probability of attempts at organisational innovation and the effects of such innovation. An integrated firm-level dataset obtained from two recent waves of the Norwegian Community Innovation Survey (CIS3 & 4) and firms’ financial accounts is used to investigate these factors. An analysis which employed a Heckman two-step estimation to ensure against potential sample selection bias demonstrates that, between 1999 and 2004, Norwegian firms were persistent in organisational innovation, and this persistence raised the (positive) effects of organisational innovation on their performance. In addition, the results indicate that a firm’s decision to pursue organisational innovation can be influenced by its past economic performance and the high costs of innovation. The results also reveal that a good share of firms in the sample undertook, and benefitted from, different types of organisational change, and such benefits could increase by means of the complementarity of organisational and technological innovation. In further explaining the rates and consequences of organisational innovation, this study argues that a firm’s age and size have different impacts on its decision to undertake organisational innovation and on the effects of such innovation on its performance. The study found some evidence to suggest that older, larger firms are more inclined to make an attempt at organisational change, while, in terms of outcomes, smaller firms are more able to benefit from such an attempt.Organisational Innovation, Firm Performance, Complementarity, Persistency, Age & Size

    User innovation and the market

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    This paper proposes a way of including in official statistics consumers as user innovators who modify or develop products for their own use. The issue addressed is the role of the market in the definition of innovation in the OECD/Eurostat Oslo Manual and the exclusion by the definition of consumers who modify or develop products and then freely reveal the knowledge gained to others. A modest proposal is made for a change to the definition which also has implications for the measurement of innovation in the public sector. The policy implications of user innovation by consumers and by firms are considered along with the importance of including consumer user innovation in official statistics. The paper ends with a programme for future work.User innovation, consumer innovation, public sector innovation, official statistics

    Accelerating innovation development and scaling processes for agricultural transformation

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    At the 5th Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture in Bali, CCAFS, IFAD and USDA-FAS organized the Side event “Accelerating innovation development and scaling climate-smart agriculture to drive a transformation in food systems”. High-level representatives of > 20 governments, research, donor, financial and policy institutions, civil society and private sectors discussed their previously shared insights and agreed to act as an “Insight Group” for further related CCAFS research and action. This Info Note summarizes the groups’ first findings, along with a short proposal for next steps

    Assessing construction innovation: theoretical and practical perspectives

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    Innovation is key for productivity improvement and advancements in different sectors of the economy, including the construction sector.  The criticism of the slow pace of innovation in construction industry may be unwarranted, considering the structure of the industry and nature of the construction business.  The loosely coupled nature of firms, mostly Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s), delivering ‘projects’ through partial engagement, together with the distinction between the project innovation and firm innovation makes it difficult to extract innovations in a meaningful way.  The problem also lies in conceptualising, defining, articulating and assessing innovation in construction.  The literature is replete with research into construction innovation, however, there is limited research into understanding how innovation is perceived and narrated in practice.  The paper aims to explore how innovation is assessed and narrated in construction, specifically analysing theory and practice perspectives.  A theoretical model was constructed from a structured literature review illustrating existing discourse and narratives of construction innovation assessment.  A qualitative analysis of ‘Professional Excellence in Building’ submission documents to the Australian Institute of Building was performed to identify the practice perspective of innovation.  The findings suggest that internal organizational and process innovation account for the majority of improvements identified.  Importantly a taxonomy of narrative is developed that articulates how the construction industry in Australia views industry innovation

    Design and radical innovation: a strategic perspective based upon a comparative case study between emergent and traditional industries in Portugal

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    The survival challenge faced by the Portuguese companies nowadays has promoted Innovation as the main management strategy to be applied. This research reveals the importance and the role of Design as the basic and integrative tool for the success of this strategy, focused on Radical or Breakthrough Innovation. The main contribution of this paper is the proposal of a conceptual model developed from a comparative case study research, made among Portuguese companies from the emergent sectors connected to new technologies and Portuguese companies from the traditional sectors. That work allowed the definition of the Success Critical Factors to consider for the development of radical new products: integrating new technologies (Science Knowledge), market sensibility (Marketing Knowledge), forecasting new needs or user interfaces and disruptive creativity (Design Knowledge)

    E-learning adoption in universities: the ‘gazebo’ effect of the social system on diffusion.

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    The implementation of e-learning in universities is often explored through the conceptual framework of the innovation diffusion model (Rogers 2003). Analysis using the five adopter categories or the characteristics of the innovation is common, but a less frequently explored element is the influence on diffusion of the social system within which the individual adopters are situated. The paper considers the potential of this element of Rogers’ model to explain the diffusion of e-learning within the social system of a university and demonstrates that the nature of universities, traditionally considered to be highly decentralized organizations composed of many ‘ivory gazebos’ rather than a single ‘ivory tower’, may expose some challenges to the usefulness of the model. Factors considered include the ambiguity of management positions and the nature of communication in devolved departments

    Beyond clusters: Fostering innovation through a differentiated and combined network approach

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    Over the past decades, economic and innovation policy across Europe moved in the direction of creating regional clusters of related firms and institutions. Creating clusters through public policy is risky, complex and costly, however. Moreover, it is not necessary to rely on clusters to stimulate innovation. A differentiated and combined network approach to enhancing innovation and stimulating economic growth may be more efficient and effective, especially though not exclusively in regions lacking clusters. The challenge of such a policy is to mitigate the bottlenecks associated with ‘global pipeline’, ‘local buzz’ and ‘stand alone’ strategies used by innovative firms (cf. Bathelt et al. 2004; Atzema & Visser 2005b), and to combine these strategies with a view to their complementarity in terms of knowledge effects. Private and semi-public brokers will be key in the evolving policy, as timely organizational change is crucial for continued innovation, while brokers also need to mitigate governance problems. This requires region-specific knowledge in terms of sectors, life cycles, institutional and socio-cultural factors, and yields spatially differentiated and differentiating adjustment strategies. The role of public policy is to assist in recruiting, provide start-up funding and monitor brokers. With this, policy moves towards a decentralized, process-based, region-specific, spatially diverging and multi-level system of innovation that is geared towards the evolving innovation strategies of firms.innovation policy, clusters, networks, governance, regionalization

    Health System Reform: The Value and Price of Innovation

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    Explores the role of innovation in healthcare by reviewing the literature on international, federal, state, and local examples of system change; barriers to change; the contributions of research, academia, and industry; and the financing of innovation

    Teaching Innovation as Part of an Agribusiness Curriculum

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    Innovation is critical to the survival of agricultural businesses in the U.S. yet few universities have classes in their curricula that focus on innovation and innovation management. Innovation includes developing new processes and concepts and taking products based on those ideas to market. By its nature, innovation generally involves technical components, market assessment, business analysis, and implementation strategies that include marketing campaigns to a target market. As a result, if innovation is going to be experientially taught to students, the class will likely need to include concepts from multiple disciplines. The objectives of this paper are to present an outline of capstone/senior design classes designed to cause students to learn innovation by participating in interdisciplinary teams working with real companies on the development of new product innovation.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,
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