Innovative Design within the Context of Virtual Internships: How Can It Be Defined and How is It Related to the Student Design Process?

Definitions of “innovative design” vary among authors and fields of study. This makes it difficult to establish how to determine innovative designs in new design environments, such as in a virtual internship environment. Nephrotex is a virtual internship which encourages players, who assume the role of virtual interns within the game, to fully explore a constrained design space with the goal of producing an optimized dialysis membrane. As a useful starting point for our definition of “innovative design” within this design environment, we referenced the work of Baregheh et al. (2009) and formed the following definition: “A process that not only leads to unique physical or technical product attributes but also adds value beyond existing designs on the market.” We defined uniqueness based on the design occurring infrequently amongst the final products of student design teams. Quality was assessed based on the work of Arastoopour and colleagues (2014), taking technical and economic performance into consideration to determine how well the design was able to meet the Nephrotex internal consultant requirements for the design. Using this definition, we sought to answer the following research question: How does the design process differ for a team that generates an innovative vs. non-innovative design within a virtual internship? Specifically, do innovative teams report more frequently that they spend the most time on certain design activities (grouped using Dym’s design framework) versus non-innovative teams? Further, do innovative teams make their final design justifications on the basis of different factors than non-innovative teams do? This research was conducted with sophomore chemical engineering students in the spring 2014 and 2015 semesters. A total of 50 teams of approximately 4-5 students each were studied. Student design processes were evaluated based on innovativeness as well as weekly journal entries where students reported the three activities they spent the most time on. Our results showed no significant differences between innovative and non-innovative teams in terms of their reports of the Dym’s-based activities that they spent the most time on, although our sample size was small. The Management category was associated with the largest effect size (d=0.68), with innovative teams reporting more frequently than non-innovative teams that they spent the most time on design activities that were Management-related. In terms of attributes that contributed to innovative products, teams with higher innovation scores tended to prioritize cost and membrane efficiency (as determined by maximum allowable flux) over patient comfort (measured by blood cell reactivity) and projected market sales. Our results are intended to provide a map for design processes that may ultimately lead to more innovative designs within a virtual internship environment

E-Learning for Teachers and Trainers : Innovative Practices, Skills and Competences

Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.Final Published versio

Peripherality and proximity. Do business support services matter?

This essay is based on empirical evidence from the case of Tuscany (Italy) and follows previous work on the role and meaning of image in regional development and innovation policies (Bellini, 2004). Discussions about image and branding policies is usually placed in the framework of "place marketing" and marketing literature helps in defining the features, components and main characters of image and of its relationship with local identity. We suggest, however, that managing images is also a political process with significant impact in supporting and shaping the scenario (perceptions and expectations) for innovation policies. In fact this process implies a competition between images in order to "control" the representation of the past, present and future of an area. This competition aims at influencing the policy agenda by manipulating the gap between image and identity. In other words, we suggest that image-related policies should be considered part of the toolbox of a modern innovation policy.

Connectivity, confidentiality and confidence: Key issues in the provision of online pro bono activities

The provision of pro bono activities for law students has become an established feature of the undergraduate legal education landscape in Law Schools in the United Kingdom (“UK”) and beyond, providing the experiential elements of clinical legal education programmes. Pro bono activities conducted online, or utilising and enhanced by technologies in other ways (for example, through the development of a mobile phone application providing legal guidance), are increasingly becoming a part of this offering, reflecting wider shifts within legal practice and society and an increasing recognition of the importance of digital literacy skills. This paper will situate these forms of online and technologically-enhanced pro bono activities both within the wider context of contemporary clinical legal education and also as a part of broader professional and societal shifts. It will explore a variety of innovative approaches being taken internationally, including work done by The Open University’s Open Justice Centre in the UK, before moving on to focus on a number of key challenges and opportunities which may arise through the increasing provision of these new forms of pro bono activities by Law Schools. These include the potential and pitfalls of the technology involved, issues with confidentiality (particularly in the context of online legal advice) and the issue of how to foster trust in the online environment. The paper will conclude with a number of suggestions for areas requiring further research and discussion to enable contemporary clinicians to fully utilise the potential of online and technologically-enhanced pro bono activities

The Importance of Clusters for Sustainable Innovation Processes: The Context of Small and Medium Sized Regions

The purpose of the current paper is to provide a critical state-of-the-art review of current research on clusters and its correlation to innovation dynamics in small and medium-sized regions. In particular, we focus on the systematization of the main concepts and theoretical insights that are tributary to the cluster overview in terms of its relevance for the sustainability of the innovation processes, knowledge production and diffusion, which take place inside small and medium-sized regions. The present working paper takes into account the initial studies on English industrial districts (in the nineteenth century), passing through the Italian industrial districts (in the 70s and 80s of the twentieth century), until the modern theories of business clusters and innovation systems. These frameworks constitute the basis of an approach to endogenous development, which gives a central role to the interaction between economic actors, the society and the institutions and to the identification, mobilization and combination of potential resources within a particular geographical area.Cluster; Innovation; Endogenous development; Territory.

The challenge of enterprise/innovation: a case study of a modern university

In the prevailing economic and political climate for Higher Education a greater emphasis has been placed on diversifying the funding base. The present study was undertaken between 2012 and 2014 and addressed the implementation of an approach to the transformation of one academic school in a medium-sized modern university in Wales to a more engaged enterprise culture. A multimethod investigation included a bi-lingual (English and Welsh) online survey of academic staff and yielded a 71% response rate (n = 45). The findings informed a series of in-depth interviews (n = 24) with a representative sample of those involved in enterprise work (support staff, managers, senior managers), and those who were not. The results provided the platform for the ‘S4E model’ for effective engagement with enterprise: (1) Strategic significance for Enterprise, (2) Support for Enterprise, (3) Synergy for Enterprise, and (4) Success for Enterprise. The outcomes of the research and the recommendations from it have potential to inform practice in other academic schools within the university and, in a wider context, within other Schools of Education regionally, nationally and internationally. Its original empirical exploration of enterprise within education studies is a significant contribution to that body of knowledge

Information Outlook, December 2006

Volume 10, Issue 12https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_2006/1011/thumbnail.jp

Changing perspectives on the internationalization of R&D and innovation by multinational enterprises: a review of the literature

Internationalization of R&D and innovation by Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) has undergone a gradual and comprehensive change in perspective over the past 50 years. From sporadic works in the late 1950s and in the 1960s, it became a systematically analysed topic in the 1970s, starting with pioneering reports and “foundation texts”. Our review unfolds the theoretical and empirical evolution of the literature from dyadic interpretations of centralization versus decentralization of R&D by MNEs to more comprehensive frameworks, wherein established MNEs from Advanced Economies still play a pivotal role, but new players and places also emerge in the global generation and diffusion of knowledge. Hence views of R&D internationalization increasingly rely on concepts, ideas and methods from IB and other related disciplines such as industrial organization, international economics and economic geography. Two main findings are highlighted. First, scholarly research pays an increasing attention to the network-like characteristics of international R&D activities. Second, different streams of literature have emphasized the role of location- specific factors in R&D internationalization. The increasing emphasis on these aspects has created new research opportunities in some key areas, including inter alia: cross-border knowledge sourcing strategies, changes in the geography of R&D and innovation, and the international fragmentation of production and R&D activities

Vietnam as a Counter-Developmental State: The Paradox of the Development of Information Technology

In the course of the global transformation from industrial to post-industrial economies during the twentieth century, the roles of computer technologies have changed. Whereas these technologies began as tools for industrial engineering, as enabling mechanisms to redefine industrial production processes, they eventually became a significant industry in themselves: hence the post-industrial economy has also become known as the information economy. Concurrently, the roles of the state in relation to economic development have been challenged by new conditions shaped by the continuously evolving characteristics of information technology. Against this backdrop, the thesis explores some different technologies in the IT industry to examine how the post-industrial characteristics of these technologies interplay with technology-upgrading approaches conducted by various actors in Vietnam. The thesis also examines how these technology-upgrading approaches relate to the Vietnamese state’s economic developmentalism. The thesis examines four sectors of Vietnam’s IT industry: outsourcing, cloud computing, the app economy and online games. The thesis finds that technology-upgrading approaches for each of these four sectors were conducted in different ways. Moreover, the roles of the Vietnamese state also differed in relation to each of these four technologyupgrading approaches. Based on these findings, the thesis presents three arguments. Firstly, the relationships between technology-upgrading approaches and the state in Vietnam are different from what the literature suggests. Secondly, technology is not simply an instrument of the state to be used for economic development; technology is also a structure shaping the role of the state in economic development. Finally there can be more than one role for the state in the IT industry, and these competing multiple roles can actually jeopardise state economic developmentalism. The thesis characterises this phenomenon as the ‘counter-developmental state’