Speciation through entrepreneurial spin-off: The Acorn-ARM story

Can the concept of speciation explain evidence on how technologies branch and advance? Can evidence on innovation through spin-off usefully inform the concept of speciation? These questions are addressed through a case study of detailed processes enabling the shift of technology to new domains of application. An innovative IT firm developed its own semiconductor technology to remedy supplier deficiencies but it required a joint venture with a completely new business model to adapt and move the technology into new market domains. We propose the concept of techno-organizational speciation to delineate this phenomenon. Competing perspectives on speciation (compatibility, niche and lineage approaches) are found to illuminate the evidence, while complementarities between these conceptual dimensions are revealed by the case. Causal processes uncovered include the following: (1) Techno-organizational speciation through spin-off may be needed to launch a dominant technical standard, compatible with multiple applications. (2) This can be achieved through niche creation from which develops a new business ecosystem. (3) Inherited knowledge together with organizationally based learning foster the branching and renewal of technological lineage

Helping CSCW applications succeed : the role of mediators in the context of use

Includes bibliographical references (p. [12]-[13]).by Kazuo Okamura ... [et al.]

Developing and evaluating an electronic 'short loan' collection in a university library

The issues involved in developing and evaluating an electronic 'short loan' collection of high-demand articles are discussed with reference to the experience of Project ACORN (Access to Course Readings via Networks), an eLib (Electronic Libraries) project. The project gathered information on the traditional short loan collection as a point of comparison with the electronic service, and on the attitudes of academic staff to the traditional collection. Findings indicated the need for close liaison with academic staff to identify items for an electronic col­ lection, and the need to recognise the wide range of students' IT skills and abilities when planning training. Users' experiences of the traditional short loan collection confirmed that an electronic service could overcome some of the difficulties. Statistics on the size and scope of Loughborough and Leicester universities' short loan collections indicated that an electronic service is unlikely to replace the traditional service. The project's experience with gaining copyright permissions from publisher’s shows that the timescales required for clearance and the uncertainty posed by refusals and differing scales of charges make it difficult for a library to plan for this type of service. Digitisation proved to be costly and the project only managed to convert 50% of its material to text files, the other 50% remaining as image files. The electronic system developed to deliver articles to end-users was designed to interact with the TalisWeb OPAC, and it proved reliable in operation. The system provides for detailed tracking of usage and the provision of detailed reports on usage to publishers. Experiences of training users are described and the need for hands­ on practice is emphasised. Finally users’ experiences of the system are briefly outlined, both positive and negative, and some usage data is presented. The conclusion points to the electronic service providing added value for users, but draws attention to the difficulties of copy­ right clearance, the costs of digitisation and the difficulty of timescales for identifying and making material available electronically

The contexts of use and the innovation of TV-centric network technologies: as viewers become consumer-users

This thesis seeks to explore something of the current nature of human, social and business contingencies constituting and motivating design, production, consumption and the use of technologies. It places a particular emphasis on the innovation of TV-centric network technologies - 'new' media technologies, particularly interactive television (i-Tv), intended to link, enhance or otherwise augment existing television technology and content. The empirical work in the thesis studied the development and implementation of a complex large-scale i-Tv trial in Cambridge, UK. Issues arising from the research led to the development of a general research framework - Contextual Usability (CU) - whose central aim is to draw awareness to the complex and multiple dimensions of the use process as a social and organisational construction, and also to redefine its place as an intrinsic experiential dimension in the domestication of products and services.Various senior managers and designers were interviewed within the company designing and producing the i-Tv technology and interface for the trial, as were 11 participant households. The author concludes with an overview suggesting the interconnected and interdependent nature of trials, technology, users, design, designers and organisation. For this he uses CU in relation to Molina's notion of Sociotechnical Constituencies to illustrate how social, cultural and organisational elements of trials both rely and impinge upon the implementation and interpretation of user and consumer research, and thus working 'images'of the user and the use process

The roots and early history of the British home computer market : origins of the masculine micro

Imperial Users onl

Removing barriers to embedded generation : a fine-grained load model to support low voltage network performance analysis

The objective of this thesis is to create a model, which provides a detailed description of the electrical load on a low voltage distribution network in the context of a typical UK urban feeder from a primary transformer. The aim of the work, when used in association with a power flow analysis package, is to help to provide a risk assessmenfto r over-voltagee vents and over-heatingi n the network when different levels of embedded generation are applied. A fine-grained domestic load model has been constructed with a three layered approach-to provide per-consumer, 1-minute averaged loads on an end-use basis. Datasets from the Load Research Group have been used as the starting point and form the basis for layer 1 which represents group-averaged demands on a halfhourly basis. Layer 2 of the model introduces diversity in terms of number of occupants, living space, ownership and soci?- economic factors. Layer -3 uses appliance duty cycles to create wider variations by random triggering to derive 1- minute loads from assigned half-hourly values. The domestic model has been adaptedf or use with smaller( sub MOW) non-domesticc onsumers. The research question for this study is whether or not the models provide an adequate representation of the electricity demand for a typical urban LV network, judged in terms of a variety of parameters. The output from the domestic model comparesw ell with measuredd ata giving realisticd emandc haracteristicsin terms of mean, peak, load factor and distribution. Compared against diversified peak demands currently in use within the industry, the model estimates values within 10% for groups fewer than 25 and 5% for groups of 100 or more. When used together with a power flow analysis package, the predicted voltage variation agrees with measured results in terms of mean value and distribution. The investigation of time and group averaging of demand, power factor surveys and, with a matching model for PV and solar thermal output, studies into electrical demand reduction within mixed communities are all possible additional applications for the model