SMEs and virtual R&D teams: a motive channel for relationship between SMEs

In today?s dynamic marketplace, manufacturing companies are under strong pressure to introduce new products for long-term survival with their competitors. Nevertheless, every company cannot cope up progressively or immediately with the market requirements due to knowledge dynamics being experienced in the competitive milieu. Increased competition and reduced product life cycles put force upon companies to develop new products faster. In response to these pressing needs, there should be some new approach compatible in flexible circumstances. This paper presents a solution based on the popular Stage-Gate system, which is closely linked with virtual team approach. Virtual teams can provide a platform to advance the knowledge-base in a company and thus to reduce time-to-market. This article introduces conceptual product development architecture under a virtual team umbrella. The paper describes all the major aspects of new product development (NPD), NPD process and its relationship with virtual teams, Stage-Gate system finally presents a modified Stage-Gate system to cope up with the changing needs. It also provides the guidelines for the successful implementation of virtual teams in new product development

Virtual R&D teams and SMEs growth: A comparative study between Iranian and Malaysian SMEs

This paper explores potential advantages of using virtual teams for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with a comprehensive review on various aspects of virtual teams. Based on the standing of the pertinent literature, attempt has been made to study the aspects by online survey method in Iran and Malaysia. In both countries, SMEs play an important role in their economies, employments, and capacity building. Virtual R&D team can be one of the means to increase SMEs efficiency and competitiveness in their local as well as global markets. In this context, surveys have been conducted to evaluate the effects of virtuality to the growth of SMEs. The study addresses some differences between two countries in engaging virtual research and development (R&D) teams in their SMEs. It is observed that there is a significant difference between the SMEs turnover that employed virtual team and that did not employ the virtual team. The way for further studies and recommend improvements are proposed.Virtual R&D team, small and medium enterprises, survey, developing countries.

Research on the Development of Measurement Scale for The Synergy of College Technological and Creative Team

Based on the strictly scale development program and the sorting of existing literature, we used the methods of interview and open questionnaire to collect measurement items for the synergy of college technological and creative team. Next we preliminarily revised measurement items through expert interview, then explored and verified the presurvey scale by using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The results show that the measurement scale, consisted of 17 items with good reliability and validity, is constituted of member\u27s identification of team goals, information communication among members, commitment of cooperation, inter-behavior between members

Disclosing the role of IT Suppliers as Digital Innovation enablers for SMEs: a strategy analysis of the European IT Sales Channel

As Information Technologies (IT) play a growingly strategic role in several industries, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) adopt IT solutions to trigger Digital Innovation supporting their processes and improving their products and services. SMEs' scarce resources and inadequate IT competencies forces them to demand support from IT suppliers in the IT adoption and Digital Innovation journey, however, little attention was paid to the business models and strategies of IT suppliers in the academic and professional literature, and SMEs find it difficult to assess and select IT suppliers that best responds to their needs and aims. This study's goal is to provide a detailed picture of the IT Sales Channel and its players in the European market. A classification framework is proposed and eleven different business models are identified. The study leverages multiple case studies relying on semi-standardized interviews with Chief Executive Officers and Marketing Managers of leading European IT suppliers

A strategic Analysis of the European Companies in the ICT Sales Channel

The strategic role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is growing in various companies. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) adopt ICT solutions to support their processes and to improve their products and services. Because of SMEs’ scarce resources and inadequate ICT competencies, they need support from ICT suppliers in the ICT adoption process. Little attention has been paid to the business models and strategies of ICT suppliers in the academic and professional literature, and SMEs find it difficult to determine the characteristics of available ICT suppliers and to choose the supplier that best responds to their needs and aims. The goal of this paper is to provide a detailed picture of the ICT sales channel and its players in the European market. A classification framework is proposed and eleven different business models are identified. The paper is based on a case study methodology that included 53 semi‐standardized interviews with CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) and marketing and communications managers at leading European ICT suppliers coupled with the literature review

Measuring the Business Value of Electronic Supply Chain Collaboration: The Case of Electronic Invoicing

In the last decade, supply chain management has changed its focus, centring now on value creation, by taking into consideration the recent trends of partners integration and implementation of internet technologies. Within this context, this paper presents measurable results regarding the business value of supply chain collaboration practices enabled by e-commerce technologies. The presented research addresses electronic supply chain collaboration by examining the case of electronic invoicing (the electronic exchange of invoice data between supply chain partners) as a type of collaborative message-based system. The paper presents the quantitative and qualitative results of a series of case studies from the grocery retail sector. The results indicate considerable cost savings, especially as the extent of collaboration increases. Additionally, qualitative results from the interviews are provided, supporting suggestions for future research

RFID-enabled Supply Chain Collaboration Services in a Networked Retail Business Environment

Since the early 1990s, there has been a growing understanding that supply chain management should be built around information sharing and collaboration among supply chain partners. The emergence of RFID technology is expected to revolutionize many of the collaborative supply chain processes and to empower new collaboration scenarios, such as anti-counterfeiting, product recall and reverse logistics, collaborative in-store promotion management and total inventory management. This paper proposes eight RFID-enabled supply chain collaboration services (e.g. dynamic pricing, smart recall, in-store promotion management, out-of-shelf response) in a networked retail business environment. The services are characterized, on a high-level, by the information shared between retailers and suppliers, the level of tagging (pallet/case/item level) and the location of the tag readers. Also, a scalable-distributed network architecture, building on the possibilities provided by web service orchestration and data stream management systems, is proposed to support these collaborative supply chain management processes. However, this paper introduces into a research-in-progress with the ultimate purpose to assess and categorize the RFID-enabled supply chain collaboration services according to four dimensions: the extent of collaboration required between retailers and suppliers, the RFID technology requirements, the transformation of existing (or the introduction of new) processes and the business performance impact of the RFID-enabled collaborative service. This research is partly funded by the European Commission (IST-2005, FP6) through the IST SMART research project with participating user companies being European grocery retailers and suppliers from the fast-moving consumer goods sector

Models of acceptance and use of technology research trends: Literature review and exploratory bibliometric study

Acceptance and Use of Technology Models suggest that some constructs predict behavioural intention towards the acceptance and use of technology. For this reason, these models are increasingly used by researchers around the world. At the same time, teachers of information technology and systems teach these models as part of the content of various courses. This study aims to analyse the publications of the last five years on Acceptance and Use of Technology Models. An exploratory bibliometric study was carried out, using the Proquest and Scopus platforms, in the period from 2014 to 2018, to find out which models are most used by researchers. The findings suggest that the number of articles into the top journals has increased, and that there is a wider array of journals publishing articles about this topic. Also, the study revealed that the most cited models were TPB and TAM.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Virtual R&D teams and SMEs growth: a comparative study between Iranian and Malaysian SMEs

This paper explores potential advantages of using virtual teams for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with a comprehensive review on various aspects of virtual teams. Based on the standing of the pertinent literatures, attempt has been made to study the aspects by online survey method in Iran and Malaysia. In both countries, SMEs play an important role in their economies, employments, and capacity building. Virtual R&D team can be one of the means to increase SMEs efficiency and competitiveness in their local as well as global markets. In this context, surveys have been conducted to evaluate the effects of virtuality to the growth of SMEs. The study addresses some differences between two countries in engaging virtual research and development (R&D) teams in their SMEs. It is observed that there is a significant difference between the SMEs turnover that employed virtual team and that did not employ the virtual team. The way for further studies and recommend improvements are proposed

A aceitação do moodle na educação a distância : uma aplicação do modelo conceitual UTAUT

Aplicou-se nesta pesquisa o modelo Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) de Venkatesh et al. (2003) buscando verificar efeitos de fatores influenciadores da Intenção de Uso e o Uso Real da plataforma MOODLE no ensino a distância. A amostra da pesquisa corresponde a 1.370 questionários válidos, de um universo de 300.000 sujeitos que utilizam ou utilizaram o MOODLE no Brasil. A análise dos dados foi feita por meio de modelagem de equações estruturais, mínimos quadrados generalizados e do método de reamostragem Jackknife para identificar o efeito entre variáveis. Como o UTAUT exige muitos parâmetros, concluiu-se que o modelo pode estar saturado. A pouca variabilidade nas respostas sugere que mais investigações sejam realizadas. _________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTThe Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model by Venkatesh et al. (2003) was applied in this research in order to verify the effects of influencing factors of Intention to Use and Real Use of the MOODLE platform in distance education. The research sample corresponds to 1.370 valid questionnaires, in a population of 300.000 subjects who use or have used MOODLE in Brazil. Data analysis was performed by structural equations modeling, generalized least squares and Jackknife resampling to identify the effect between variables. As the UTAUT requires many parameters, it was concluded that the model may be saturated. Low variability in responses suggests the execution of further investigations