Innovation search: the role of innovation intermediaries in the search process

The aim of this paper is to explore how innovation search is conceptualised, given that firms increasingly use innovation intermediaries. The paper examines the search processes which involves the role of innovation intermediaries in different stages of the innovation search process. The study discovered that innovation search activity is a much more extended and complex process, not being as targeted or as specific than previously conceptualised, and involves a set of search stages, which are associated with a loosely coupled iterative search process. Innovation intermediaries were also discovered to be undertaking new, more extended roles in the search process, through, for example, combining new search procedures with online digital platforms.publishedVersio

Networks for Economic Sociology (and Not the Other Way Around)

Note from the editor Networks for economic sociology (not the other way around) by Olivier Godechot Is social network analysis useful for studying the family economy? by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac Networks of Corporate Ancestry by Lasse Folke Henriksen et al. Embeddedness and decoupling in innovation activities by Michel Grossetti A tale of two cities: the regional dimension of the Ecuadorian securities market by Andrés Chiriboga-Tejada Neo-structural economic sociology beyond embeddedness by ORIO Network Book Review

Working together: multicultural collaboration in the interfaith immigrant rights movement

In 2006, millions of Immigrant Rights Movement (IRM) activists and allies stomped through the streets of cities throughout the United States. Attracting a diverse array of participants, the IRM includes immigrants and non-immigrants and people from varying religious and non-religious traditions. This dissertation focuses on the social cohesion as an element of the collective identity of this multicultural and multi-faith movement. Taking the IRM in San Diego County as a critical case, this study included data from forty-nine extensive formal interviews with movement participants in sixteen organizations, along with countless informal conversations during participant observation in over two hundred activist-organized events from April 2006 until August 2008. By focusing on movement narratives, frames, and patterns of interaction, this study finds that stories of change, a progressively inclusive moral framework, and what I call "multicultural activist etiquette" serve as unifying mechanisms in the IRM. In stories of change, we hear how activists articulated the right to migrate and advocate for worker rights through shared narratives of agitation and hope-generating stories of collective action. A shared sense of injustice and collectively focused movement goals are informed by a belief system about how the world ought to operate that is located at the ideological intersection between religious and non-religious. An inclusive and humanitarian moral framework provided the common ground upon which diverse activists organize, but this progressive moral framework was differently legitimated by the diverse religious and non-religious traditions of the activists. They agreed that all people are inherently equal, and everyone ought to care for one another, upholding an emphasis on marginalized immigrants. This over-arching moral framework moved beyond multicultural and multi-faith rhetoric and helped guide and affirm the way activists interacted in meeting spaces. Together, they constructed a code of collaboration, the multicultural activist etiquette, that facilitated equality within organizational processes, in an emotionally and physically secure meeting space, while focusing on productivity toward movement goals. Finally, this study recognizes immigrant activists as "rule-changers," agents of change collaborating to improve their own quality of life in the U.S. It thus offers an alternative to current perspectives on immigrant assimilation into American society

Information technology and military performance

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 519-544).Militaries have long been eager to adopt the latest technology (IT) in a quest to improve knowledge of and control over the battlefield. At the same time, uncertainty and confusion have remained prominent in actual experience of war. IT usage sometimes improves knowledge, but it sometimes contributes to tactical blunders and misplaced hubris. As militaries invest intensively in IT, they also tend to develop larger headquarters staffs, depend more heavily on planning and intelligence, and employ a larger percentage of personnel in knowledge work rather than physical combat. Both optimists and pessimists about the so-called "revolution in military affairs" have tended to overlook the ways in which IT is profoundly and ambiguously embedded in everyday organizational life. Technocrats embrace IT to "lift the fog of war," but IT often becomes a source of breakdowns, misperception, and politicization. To describe the conditions under which IT usage improves or degrades organizational performance, this dissertation develops the notion of information friction, an aggregate measure of the intensity of organizational struggle to coordinate IT with the operational environment. It articulates hypotheses about how the structure of the external battlefield, internal bureaucratic politics, and patterns of human-computer interaction can either exacerbate or relieve friction, which thus degrades or improves performance. Technological determinism alone cannot account for the increasing complexity and variable performances of information phenomena. Information friction theory is empirically grounded in a participant-observation study of U.S. special operations in Iraq from 2007 to 2008. To test the external validity of insights gained through fieldwork in Iraq, an historical study of the 1940 Battle of Britain examines IT usage in a totally different structural, organizational, and technological context.(cont.) These paired cases show that high information friction, and thus degraded performance, can arise with sophisticated IT, while lower friction and impressive performance can occur with far less sophisticated networks. The social context, not just the quality of technology, makes all the difference. Many shorter examples from recent military history are included to illustrate concepts. This project should be of broad interest to students of organizational knowledge, IT, and military effectiveness.by Jon Randall Lindsay.Ph.D

Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications

The Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions with Biomedical Applications (MAVEBA) workshop came into being in 1999 from the particularly felt need of sharing know-how, objectives and results between areas that until then seemed quite distinct such as bioengineering, medicine and singing. MAVEBA deals with all aspects concerning the study of the human voice with applications ranging from the neonate to the adult and elderly. Over the years the initial issues have grown and spread also in other aspects of research such as occupational voice disorders, neurology, rehabilitation, image and video analysis. MAVEBA takes place every two years always in Firenze, Italy