Free Technology Academy : a Joint Venture of Free Software and OER

The decision to publish educational materials openly and under free licenses brings up the challenge of doing it in a sustainable way. Some lessons can be learned from the business models for production, maintenance and distribution of Free and Open Source Software. The Free Technology Academy (FTA) has taken on these challenges and has implemented some of these models. We briefly review the FTA educational programme, methodologies and organisation, and see to which extent these models are proving successful in the case of the FTA

Teaching business plan negotiation: How to foster entrepreneurship with engineering students

business plan, entrepreneurship

Opportunity Recognition in High Tech and Regulatory Environment: A study of product based Indian Telecom start-ups

Opportunity recognition forms the first step of entrepreneurship. Off late entrepreneurship research has looked at opportunity recognition from varied lenses with entrepreneurial learning forming the core of most scholarly work. However opportunity recognition in high tech sectors is slightly different due to a high component of knowledge intensiveness inherent in such sectors and has been largely ignored in most work. So, we explore a specific high tech sector in the paper to understand and further the existing concepts within opportunity recognition process. We choose the Indian telecom sector as the context of the study and using an inductive case based approach arrive at conceptual combination as the dominant form of idea generation. The regulatory environment was found to acts as an enabler for the new ideas to flourish. We also bring in the idea of dynamic customization as the driving force behind the venture akin to symbiotic relationship present between organisms in the nature.

Codified-Tacit and General-Specific Knowledge in the division of labour among firms. A study of the Software Industry

This paper addresses the organisation and codification of knowledge in the software industry. It analyses various economic incentives to codification, including the need to improve the productivity and quality of software production processes and to access inter-firm collaborations. The paper examines the experience of four Italian software firms specialised in software packages and services. It compares their capabilities, the main sources of tacit knowledge, their specific incentives to invest in knowledge codification, their usage of formal software development methodologies and quality control systems. Finally, the paper analyses two distinct technological collaborations that two of these firms have recently established.

The Birth of a New Industry: Entry by Start-ups and the Drivers of Firm Growth. The Case of Encryption Software

The paper analyses the birth of the Encryption Software Industry (ESI), a new niche in the software industry. Using a Chandlerian perspective, this work reports the main facts about firm entry and growth, with a particular focus on start-up strategies and actions. Since scale economies do not play a major role in ESI, the paper investigates the different sources of firm competitive advantages. This work shows that innovation and product differentiation, along with investments in co-specialised assets, are variables strongly correlated to young firm probability to survive and grow. In so doing, we have collected highly detailed information on product introduction, US patents granted, worldwide alliances and biographical data of firm founders.Entry, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Software.

Keynote address: Design Research and Academic Disciplines

This article, published in Design Research Quarterly (3:4) October 2008, is based on the keynote address given by Prof Alan Blackwell at the DRS conference in 2008. Design Research Quarterly. Design Research Society ISSN 1752-8445</p

Reimaginging Learning: A Big Bet on the Future of American Education

Today's young people are the most diverse, connected generation in history and have incredible aspirations for themselves. Educators all over the country are reimagining learning to better meet this generation's needs, rethinking classrooms and schools so they work better for students. It's an exciting time for innovation in education.At the same time, big bets are an increasingly popular concept in philanthropy. Several articles and papers in the last year have encouraged donors to consider them as a way of creating meaningful change, including in education. Big bets are usually defined as large grants to a specific issue or an individual organization.We're proposing something different.We've been working with partners across the country who are pursuing a common vision: reimagining learning with a broad set of outcomes in mind, so that every student finishes high school with an abundance of choices and the freedom to pursue them. Philanthropists have an opportunity to make a big bet on this shared vision.Most schools weren't designed with this vision in mind. But right now, all over the country, teams of educators are working to change this. They are partnering with families to create schools that speak to their hopes and honor their strengths. These schools prioritize rigorous academics and help students develop critical thinking skills, set important goals and create plans to reach them, and develop the mindsets and habits they need to take charge of their futures.Through deep engagement with our partners, we've thought concretely about how these ideas might spread and where existing momentum and early evidence might shine a light on a path forward. In September 2015, with our partners Summit Public Schools and Transcend, we released a paper entitled Dissatisfied Yet Optimistic (DYO), which made the case for reimagining learning. This new companion piece explores what it might take to strengthen and accelerate the momentum created by the early pioneers who are designing schools consistent with the ideas in DYO.What follows is a big idea for how $4 billion in philanthropy over 10 years could dramatically improve the performance of our schools by focusing on this emerging vision for how schools could produce much better and broader outcomes for students

Networks in Entrepreneurship

The value of networks as integral part of the explanation of entrepreneurial success is widely acknowledged. However, the network perspective lacks specification of the various dimensions of a network and their impact on the early development of a venture. We make a distinction between a Schumpeterian start-up pursuing a radical innovation and a Kirznerian venture on basis of an incremental innovation. This distinction is introduced as a contingency in the way networks contribute to the ability of the entrepreneur to discover opportunities, to get resources, and to gain legitimacy. In this explorative study three cases on high technology firms in The Netherlands provide empirical material to develop a number of propositions on the network effect on the survival or performance of start-ups.networks;discovering opportunities;entrepreneurial processes;high-tech entrepreneurship;start-up firms