Problems in increasing innovative sustainability of regional development

The article provides a comparative analysis of innovative and technological development in Russia and other countries. The paper shows that the innovation sector of the Russian Federation lags behind most developed and developing countries: Russia has almost left the market of high technologies, the main expenditures on innovations are incurred in the sectors of low and medium technology industries; the self-sufficiency in the Russian economy in a number of key types of manufacturing equipment is significantly below the threshold marks determined by national security requirements. The authors describe the differentiation of innovative development in the Russian regions. The study of Russian innovation space has revealed that there are fairly intensive processes of science decay on the periphery, which causes serious problems for the spread of innovative impulses across the country. The article elaborates the methodology for comprehensive assessment of innovative security in the region and presents the relevant calculations for the regions of the Ural Federal District (UFD). It identifies the factors of innovative sustainability that are the most critical for these regions. The authors present the forecast and built long-term forecast trajectories for the level of innovative security in UFD by using the modernized Hurst method. They define the main barriers to the innovative development of Russian regions. The article presents the methodological approaches to substantiating the priority areas for building the innovative systems of regions by taking into account the characteristics of their science and manufacturing complexes. The authors propose a methodology to formally assess the priority of establishing in the region the centers of innovative activity aimed at supporting the competitiveness of industries with different levels of technology intensity. The paper presents the results of calculations with regard to priority of establishing the centers of innovative activity aimed at supporting the development of industries with different level of technology intensity using the example of UFD, one of the leading Russian regions in terms of innovation and production capacity.The article has been supported by the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation, Project 14-02-00331 “Innovative and technology development of the region: assessment, forecasting and ways of progressing”

Bringing troubled water: quality of experience in a mobile media context

The ICT environment went through notable changes, which have had an irreversible and strong influence on both ICT innovation processes and the role of end-users. In this context, technology developers are increasingly expected to take users’ experiences with technology into account during the process of developing applications or frameworks. As technology is more and more embedded in users’ daily lives, they seek out those personalized values to satisfy their own, situational needs. As a result, a thorough insight in users’ expectations and experiences at various levels (both explicit and more latent) and in different contexts (eg. mobile) has become a crucial determinant for the successful development, introduction and adoption of new ICTs. To this end, our paper focuses on the increased importance of Quality of Experience (QoE). It provides a conceptual model for QoE and furthermore discusses the prevalent gap that still exists between QoE and Quality of Service (QoS). Our main objective is to present a new methodology for correlating user experience to QoS parameters. This methodology was tested in the context of an exploratory interdisciplinary study on QoE-measurement. This new approach goes beyond QoS-parameters and aims to also grasp the social and contextual dimensions of users’ experiences

Limits and opportunities of risk analysis application in railway systems

Risk Analysis is a collection of methods widely used in many industrial sectors. In the transport sector it has been particularly used for air transport applications. The reasons for this wide use are well-known: risk analysis allows to approach the safety theme in a stochastic - rather than deterministic - way, it forces to break down the system in sub-components, last but not least it allows a comparison between solutions with different costs, introducing de facto an element of economic feasibility of the project alternatives in the safety field. Apart from the United Kingdom, in Europe the application of this tool in the railway sector is relatively recent. In particular Directive 2004/49/EC (the "railway safety directive") provides for compulsory risk assessment in relation to the activities of railway Infrastructure Managers (IMs) and of Railway Undertakings (RUs). Nevertheless the peculiarity of the railway system - in which human, procedural, environmental and technological components have a continuous interchange and in which human responsibilities and technological functions often overlap - induced the EC to allow wide margins of subjectivity in the interpretation of risk assessment. When enacting Commission Regulation (EC) No 352/2009 which further regulates this subject, a risk assessment is considered positive also if the IM or RU declare to take safety measures widely used in normal practice. The paper shows the results of a structured comparative analysis of the rail sector and other industrial sectors, which illustrate the difficulties, but also the opportunities, of a transfer towards the railway system of the risk analysis methods currently in use for the other systems

Methods and models of next generation technology enhanced learning - White Paper

Our understanding of learning with technology is increasingly lagging behind technological advancements, such that it is no longer possible to fully understand learning with technologies without bringing together evidence from practice-based experiences and theoretical insight to inform research, design, policy and practice. Furthermore, whilst practical experiences and theoretical insights make significant contributions towards understanding learning with new technologies, the dynamic nature of learner practices and study contexts make it difficult to predict future requirements in terms of methods and models for next generation technology enhanced learning. We therefore require formal and comprehensive methods and models of learning with technology that accommodate theory and practice whilst allowing us to anticipate methodological innovations that capture future transitions and changes in learner practices and study contexts, in order to inform research, design, policy and practice. Workshop participants represented different communities of interest including research, design, evaluation and assessment. The overall objective was to anticipate methodological innovations in technology enhanced learning research and design over the next 5/10 years

Innovative competitiveness of russian regions

The article analyses the competitive challenges of Russian regional economies and proposes ways of selecting competitive priorities. The author assumes that selection of priorities for improving a region’s innovative competitiveness should involve not only its innovative R&D potential but also the effects that innovative and socio-economic development of the regions have on each other. This is because a region’s innovative competitiveness manifests itself in both its ability to create innovation and its increased resistance based on such innovation, and, therefore, it is closely related to its industrial and technological type from the outset. The analysis of research and innovative potentials of Russian regions shows that their innovative competitiveness has been deteriorating largely for the reason that modern Russia lacks any significant groups of political influence whose interests would be closely related to the development of the engineering industry, high technologies, and restoration of a sound industrial structure. The article shows mutual dependence between the socially required level of support to the regions’ innovative competitiveness and the innovation requirements of the industries with prevailing levels of technological efficiency. The author proposes a methodological approach to the selection of priorities for increasing the innovative competitiveness of Russian regions. Such priorities should take into account maintenance and enhancement of the research and innovative potentials of the country, on the one hand, and the need to improve regions’ sustainability, on the other hand. With the contemporary statistic base in mind, the author has created an integrated development priority index for regional innovation centers intended to increase the resistance of the manufacturers with various research intensity levels. The article rates Russian regions according to the technological complexity (high, mid, low, resource-extracting) required by the innovation centers to be created taking metallurgy as an example. The author suggests ways to increase the innovative competitiveness of Russian regions of various industrial and technological types. The article is intended for experts in theoretical and practical management of innovation.The article has been prepared with the support of the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation, Project 14-02-00331 "Region’s Innovative and Technological Development: Assessment, Projections, and Ways of Progressing.

Contractors Perspective on the Selection of Innovative Sustainable Technologies for Achieving Zero Carbon Retail Buildings

The use of innovative sustainable technologies (IST) has been regarded as an effective approach to enhancing energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions of buildings. However, contractors face significant challenges in the selection of IST. The reported challenges in the literature include: lack of skills and knowledge, uncertainties, risks and the rapid development of a large number of technological alternatives and decision criteria. The selection process emerges as a multi-attribute, value-based task that includes both qualitative and quantitative factors, which are often assessed with imprecise data and human judgments. This paper aims to establish the decision criteria for the selection of IST for achieving low carbon existing retail buildings with a focus on the main contractor’s perspective. The arguments are informed by the combination of literature review and an in-depth case study with a UK leading contractor. Five broad decision criteria are identified systematically drawing on the contractor’s practice. The established criteria are weighted and ranked using the analytic hierarchy process and expert opinions; with ‘margin opportunity’ being the most important, followed by ‘repeat business’, ‘investment costs’, ‘differentiation’ and then ‘transferability’. The findings should facilitate the integration of various facets of the selection process and stimulate contractors to use IST

The moral psychology of Value Sensitive Design: the methodological issues of moral intuitions for responsible innovation

This paper argues that although moral intuitions are insufficient for making judgments on new technological innovations, they maintain great utility for informing responsible innovation. To do this, this paper employs the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) methodology as an illustrative example of how stakeholder values can be better distilled to inform responsible innovation. Further, it is argued that moral intuitions are necessary for determining stakeholder values required for the design of responsible technologies. This argument is supported by the claim that the moral intuitions of stakeholders allow designers to conceptualize stakeholder values and incorporate them into the early phases of design. It is concluded that design-for-values (DFV) frameworks like the VSD methodology can remain potent if developers adopt heuristic tools to diminish the influence of cognitive biases thus strengthening the reliability of moral intuitions

Advanced Techniques for Assets Maintenance Management

16th IFAC Symposium on Information Control Problems in Manufacturing INCOM 2018 Bergamo, Italy, 11–13 June 2018. Edited by Marco Macchi, László Monostori, Roberto PintoThe aim of this paper is to remark the importance of new and advanced techniques supporting decision making in different business processes for maintenance and assets management, as well as the basic need of adopting a certain management framework with a clear processes map and the corresponding IT supporting systems. Framework processes and systems will be the key fundamental enablers for success and for continuous improvement. The suggested framework will help to define and improve business policies and work procedures for the assets operation and maintenance along their life cycle. The following sections present some achievements on this focus, proposing finally possible future lines for a research agenda within this field of assets management

Evaluation of innovative technology market potential on the basis of technology audit

Enterprise innovation activity supposes coordinated technical and business processes of decision-making and its performance required for successful transformation of new product or service from concept to market. The purpose of this study is to develop valuation methods of innovative technology market potential and prospects of their introduction into the production enterprise activity. In order to achieve this goal, we used brand new evaluation tool, this is technology audit conception, application of which increased significantly the accuracy and reliability of technology market potential evaluation. Clarification of terminological essence of technological audit allowed the authors to discover the content of technology audit components required for the market research and thereupon to develop evaluation mechanism for innovative technology market potential using technology audit. This mechanism is built on structure evaluation table of technology market potential level detection as an object of commercialization. To ensure the efficiency of practical effect of the mechanism proposed, the authors systematized and completed methods of functional analysis and scanning of market environment for the purpose of qualitative comprehensive evaluation and innovative technology market potential forecasting. Introduction of the proposed evaluation method for technology market potential will result in the improvement of efficiency of enterprise innovation activity due to more rational distribution of available resources and immediate financing of developments with greater market potential

Innovative environment for business development

Innovativeness is one of the main determinants for a company’s development and when searching for the correlation between innovativeness and development one needs to apply quantative measures. This work includes a model for a company’s assessment in its technology and environment innovative aspects. The concept of quantative assessment of environment is presented through determining innovation structure and coming up with a general innovation index. It is an important element in creating a diagnostic tool to be applied in the area of innovativeness and development interdependences.Preparation and printing funded by the National Agency for Research and Development under project “Kreator Innowacyjności – wparcie dla Przedsiębiorczości akademickiej