A Novel Approach to Incubator Evaluations: The PROMETHEE Outranking Procedures

Considerable public resources are devoted to the establishment and operation of business incubators (BIs), which are seen as catalysts for the promotion of entrepreneurship, innovation activities and regional development. Despite the vast amount of research that has focused on the outcomes or effectiveness of incubator initiatives and how to measure incubator performance, there is still little understanding of how to determine incubators that are more effective than others. Based on data from 410 graduate firms, this paper applies the multi-criteria outranking technique PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation) and compares the long-term effectiveness of five technology-oriented BIs in Germany. This is the first time that outranking procedures are used in incubator evaluations. In particular, we investigate whether PROMETHEE is a well-suited methodological approach for the evaluation and comparisons in the specific context of business incubation.business incubators, evaluation, performance measures, PROMETHEE, Outranking

Estrategias competitivas de conocimiento y comercialización de la innovación: un dofa unificado y un enfoque de proceso de análisis jerárquico difuso (fuzzy ahp)

Universities have shown a strong desire to commercialize researches and innovations. As a result, they are increasingly weaning themselves from public budgets. Commercialization has become the gateway for privatization, but the improper selection of commercialization strategies often results in the elimination of resources and time. The correct evaluation and ranking of strategies for the best resources is essential for the competitive performance of a university. The hybrid SWOT and Fuzzy AHP model adopted in this study provides a clear categorization of these university strategies. The first and relevant criteria as well as sub-criteria are identified using SWOT analysis. Fuzzy AHP tool is then used to evaluate and rank the internal and external factors that affect competition in Iranian universities. Based on the IE matrix, the growth and the process of building strategies are important priorities when considering commercializing. The results of this study revealed that academic startups, joint technology, joint research laboratories, strategic alliances, recruiting pundit and contracting with industry are the best strategies for Iranian universities.Las universidades han mostrado un fuerte deseo de comercializar investigaciones e innovación. Como resultado de esto, cada vez más buscan depender menos de los presupuestos públicos. La comercialización se ha convertido en la entrada a la privatización, sin embargo, la selección incorrecta de las estrategias de comercialización con frecuencia resulta en la eliminación de recursos y tiempo. La correcta evaluación y ranking de estrategias para los mejores recursos es esencial para el desempeño competitivo de una universidad. El híbrido entre el DOFA y el modelo proceso de análisis jerárquico difuso (Fuzzy AHP) adoptado en este estudio, provee una categorización clara de las estrategias de estas universidades. Los criterios principales y relevantes, al igual que los subcriterios, son identificados utilizando el análisis DOFA. La herramienta Fuzzy AHP se utiliza luego para evaluar y valorar los factores internos y externos que afectan la competencia en las universidades de Irán. Teniendo como base la matriz IE, el crecimiento y el proceso de construcción de las estrategias son prioridades cuando se tiene en cuenta la comercialización. Los resultados de este estudio revelan que los emprendimientos académicos, la tecnología conjunta, los laboratorios de investigación conjunta, las alianzas estratégicas, los expertos en reclutamiento y las contrataciones con la industria son las mejores estrategias para las universidades iraníes.

Green Technologies for Production Processes

This book focuses on original research works about Green Technologies for Production Processes, including discrete production processes and process production processes, from various aspects that tackle product, process, and system issues in production. The aim is to report the state-of-the-art on relevant research topics and highlight the barriers, challenges, and opportunities we are facing. This book includes 22 research papers and involves energy-saving and waste reduction in production processes, design and manufacturing of green products, low carbon manufacturing and remanufacturing, management and policy for sustainable production, technologies of mitigating CO2 emissions, and other green technologies

International entrepreneurial startups' location under uncertainty through a heterogeneous multi-layer decision-making approach:Evidence and application of an emerging economy

Purpose: Science and technology parks (STPs) have a limited capacity, which can create challenging conditions for applicants. This makes the location selection a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem to find and apply for the most appropriate STP with the highest accordance with the startup's requirements. This research aims to select the most appropriate STP to locate an international entrepreneurial pharmaceutical startup under uncertainty. Since drugs are generally produced domestically in developing countries such as Iran, the access of pharmaceutical startups to the resources provided by STPs can lead to overcoming competitors and improving the country's health system. Design/methodology/approach: In this research, the factors or attributes effective on startup location were extracted through a two-round Delphi method, which was performed among 15 experts within three groups. Subsequently, the determining factors were used to select the location of a pharmaceutical startup among possible STPs. In this regard, decision-makers were allowed to use different types of numbers to transfer their opinion. Afterward, the heterogeneous weighted aggregated sum product assessment (HWASPAS) method was applied to calculate the score of each alternative and rank them to place the studied startup successfully. Findings: The results indicated that Tehran STP stands in the first place; however, if the decision was made based on single criterion like cost, some other STPs could be preferable, and many managers would lose this choice. Furthermore, the results of the proposed method were close to other popular heterogeneous MCDM approaches. Originality/value: A heterogeneous WASPAS is developed in this article for the first time to enable international entrepreneurs to imply their opinion with various values and linguistic variables to reduce the emphasis on accurate data in an uncertain environment

Living Labs as Tools for Open Innovation

This paper presents a Living Lab in Stockholm as a focal point for discussing how the Living Lab concept can be extended and used for engaging in multiorganizational open innovation. Although Living Labs have been found to have potential for driving innovation through collaboration, more research is necessary to find tangible ways of organizing this kind of collaboration. The paper is explorative and empirically induced from an ongoing development and practical implementation of a Living Lab at Stockholm-Arlanda Airport - Sweden's largest airport situated outside Stockholm. This Airport Living Lab involves a number of large industrial and academic stakeholders aiming at ensuring multi-organizational innovation delivery. Of special interest is how the Living Lab concept should evolve to continue creating conditions for user-oriented innovations through multi-organizational collaboration which would not necessarily take place otherwise. Congruent with the explorative aim of the paper it ends up in a discussion about five propositions that should be on the agenda of research and implementation for Living Lab founders in the coming years.Living Labs, Open innovation, Electronic Collaboration Tools

GIS-based approach for optimization of onshore wind park infrastructure alignment in Finland

Wind power is a rapidly developing, low-emission form of energy production. In Fin-land, the official objective is to increase wind power capacity from the current 1 005 MW up to 3 500–4 000 MW by 2025. By the end of April 2015, the total capacity of all wind power project being planned in Finland had surpassed 11 000 MW. As the amount of projects in Finland is record high, an increasing amount of infrastructure is also being planned and constructed. Traditionally, these planning operations are conducted using manual and labor-intensive work methods that are prone to subjectivity. This study introduces a GIS-based methodology for determining optimal paths to sup-port the planning of onshore wind park infrastructure alignment in Nordanå-Lövböle wind park located on the island of Kemiönsaari in Southwest Finland. The presented methodology utilizes a least-cost path (LCP) algorithm for searching of optimal paths within a high resolution real-world terrain dataset derived from airborne lidar scannings. In addition, planning data is used to provide a realistic planning framework for the anal-ysis. In order to produce realistic results, the physiographic and planning datasets are standardized and weighted according to qualitative suitability assessments by utilizing methods and practices offered by multi-criteria evaluation (MCE). The results are pre-sented as scenarios to correspond various different planning objectives. Finally, the methodology is documented by using tools of Business Process Management (BPM). The results show that the presented methodology can be effectively used to search and identify extensive, 20 to 35 kilometers long networks of paths that correspond to certain optimization objectives in the study area. The utilization of high-resolution terrain data produces a more objective and more detailed path alignment plan. This study demon-strates that the presented methodology can be practically applied to support a wind power infrastructure alignment planning process. The six-phase structure of the method-ology allows straightforward incorporation of different optimization objectives. The methodology responds well to combining quantitative and qualitative data. Additional-ly, the careful documentation presents an example of how the methodology can be eval-uated and developed as a business process. This thesis also shows that more emphasis on the research of algorithm-based, more objective methods for the planning of infrastruc-ture alignment is desirable, as technological development has only recently started to realize the potential of these computational methods.Siirretty Doriast

Technologijų perdavimo proceso aukštojo mokslo institucijose efektyvumo vertinimas

Higher education institutions (HEIs) play the key role as the link to encourage science and business partnerships within innovation systems worldwide. Notwithstanding one of the most important issue is to increase Lithuanian innovation potential. This dissertation analyses the problems of inefficient technology transfer (TT) and commercialization process, financial and human resource allocation at universities. The object of the research is the efficiency of technology transfer process (TTP) in higher education institutions. The analysis of technology transfer offices (TTOs) within the TTP allows the best model to be suggested for the evaluation of TTP as well as the improvement of TT results in the future perspective. This model is designed to assess the performance of the HEIs, to identify key indicators that demonstrate the efficiency of TTP, allowing to design future strategies to improve the efficiency of HEIs TTP financial and human capital. The goal of the dissertation is to examine TT process, propose and empirically test the efficiency evaluation model of the technology transfer process at HEIs. It is important to assess how the institutional (TTO employees, tasks, PhD-share) and regional (industry concentration, startups, patent applications) factors of TTO influence TT performance and commercialization. This research work resolves a few key tasks: 1. To conduct a theoretical analysis of the TTP (discussing the concept of the TTP and the key attributes, reviewing the foreign TT models, discussing factors encouraging the improvement of the TTP); 2. To perform a theoretical analysis of the efficiency of the TTP activities; 3. To create an original TTP efficiency evaluation model based on a comparative analysis of multicriteria research methods suitable to perform evaluation of TT activities of HEIs; 4. To conduct an empirical research and to validate the efficiency evaluation model of TTP using multicriteria research tools (FARE, TOPSIS, MULTIMOORA, COPRAS and DEA), to gather and aggregate the research data needed to evaluate the efficiency of the TTP, and to create a database for empirical research; 5. To analyse and discuss the research results of TTP, to formulate final conclusions to assess HEIs’ TTP efficiency, which would help to im-prove the performance of economic and other indicators through a more efficient allocation of financial and human resources. Analysis of research results shows that the number of employees working in TTO correlates with the number of intellectual (inventions) products that are being developed during the research and development (R&D) process.Dissertatio

Evaluation of efficiency measurement of selected technoparks with data envelopment analysis (DEA)

Technology Development Zones (Technoparks) are units that focuses on working effectively and producing productive works due to their structures. It is known that each technopark differs in terms of its production method and the benefits it provides.This research respond to give information about the general conditions of the Technoparks whose data were shared publicly and they were valuated within the scope of expected and realized benefits. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), one of the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) Methods is applied in the study. DEA is considered as one of the most frequently preferred analysis methods to measure efficiency, especially in structures with economic decision-making mechanisms. This paper includes 9 Technoparks, which share the data of the determined performance indicators up-to-date, according to the analysis of efficiency measurements performed with 3 inputs and 2 outputs. Collaboration and patent numbers among the variables used in the study are the output variables; infrastructure, offered advantages and proximity to the university refer to the input variables. The efficiency of the technoparks was measured with CCR (Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes) Input and Output Oriented Models, the issues deemed to increase the benefits provided by the technoparks are evaluated, and suggestions are made within the scope of the findings

Disaster management in industrial areas: perspectives, challenges and future research

Purpose: In most countries, development, growth, and sustenance of industrial facilities are given utmost importance due to the influence in the socio-economic development of the country. Therefore, special economic zones, or industrial areas or industrial cities are developed in order to provide the required services for the sustained operation of such facilities. Such facilities not only provide a prolonged economic support to the country but it also helps in the societal aspects as well by providing livelihood to thousands of people. Therefore, any disaster in any of the facilities in the industrial area will have a significant impact on the population, facilities, the economy, and threatens the sustainability of the operations. This paper provides review of such literature that focus on theory and practice of disaster management in industrial cities. Design/methodology/approach: In the paper, content analysis method is used in order to elicit the insights of the literature available. The methodology uses search methods, literature segregation and developing the current knowledge on different phases of industrial disaster management. Findings: It is found that the research is done in all phases of disaster management, namely, preventive phase, reactive phase and corrective phase. The research in each of these areas are focused on four main aspects, which are facilities, resources, support systems and modeling. Nevertheless, the research in the industrial cities is insignificant. Moreover, the modeling part does not explicitly consider the nature of industrial cities, where many of the chemical and chemical processing can be highly flammable thus creating a very large disaster impact. Some research is focused at an individual plant and scaled up to the industrial cities. The modeling part is weak in terms of comprehensively analyzing and assisting disaster management in the industrial cities. Originality/value: The comprehensive review using content analysis on disaster management is presented here. The review helps the researchers to understand the gap in the literature in order to extend further research for disaster management in large scale industrial cities.Peer Reviewe

Multicriteria Suitability modeling for in-river hydrokinetic turbines: Case of the Hudson River

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesThe energy of water flowing through rivers 24/7 is one of the most reliable constant forms of clean energy available nowadays, and the potential of hydrokinetic power exploitation is rapidly growing. In this project we have set a framework that traces the hydrological network of the Hudson River, combine the available data on and around the region, considering the physical aspect of the stream; bathymetry and power density, the environmental aspect; protected and critical areas, and the socioeconomic aspect; accessibility and proximity to populated regions, and eventually pick the installation sites of the Hydrokinetic turbines over the stream. Moreover, we were able to explicate the parallels between the different approaches for this same purpose, bringing their differences into relief, while selecting the methodology that best fits the nature of our study. This project is a conceptual framework for articulating experimental guidelines to this state-of-the-art technology of river Hydrokinetic energy converters, to ultimately help decision makers consider more sustainable projects like In-stream-hydro systems as a practical support for the electrical grid, to aid secluded communities, and those surrounding old dammed structures recover. The ultimate goal is to obtain enough energy from clean power sources while making sure that the impact of these energy resources on the environment, economy and society is reduced methodically. The results revealed that: It is possible to effectively take in consideration different aspects iv (physical, environmental, and socioeconomical) that affect the deployment strategy of the turbines’ locations. Selecting the regions over the Hudson River, with the highest potential can be done with more than one method, (the weighted overlay method gave the best results). The picked-out sites of both methods designate regions where high-velocity streams were located, with over 5 meters depth, proximity to populated areas, access to the road network and electrical grid, while maintaining proper distance from the environmental sensitive and protected areas. The validation of these suitable locations however needs further on-site assessment. Although river flow is considerably slower than tides and ocean currents, when the river is perennial (continuous baseflow throughout the year), or have perennial tributaries (free flowing stream that discharges into the main river channel), it provides constant energy flow that can be harnessed using the power turbines, all year long. This project establishes the significance of incorporating different themes in pinpointing the suitable locations, using solely a GIS-based multi-Criteria analysis approach (MCA), without relying on any other equipment. And it is feasible as long as the necessary data is available