Innovation dialogue - Being strategic in the face of complexity - Conference report

The Innovation Dialogue on Being Strategic in the Face of Complexity was held in Wageningen on 31 November and 1 December 2009. The event is part of a growing dialogue in the international development sector about the complexities of social, economic and political change. It builds on two previous events hosted the Innovation Dialogue on Navigating Complexity (May 2009) and the Seminar on Institutions, Theories of Change and Capacity Development (December 2008). Over 120 people attended the event coming from a range of Dutch and international development organizations. The event was aimed at bridging practitioner, policy and academic interests. It brought together people working on sustainable business strategies, social entrepreneurship and international development. Leading thinkers and practitioners offered their insights on what it means to "be strategic in complex times". The Dialogue was organized and hosted by the Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation working with the Chair Groups of Communication & Innovation Studies, Disaster Studies, Education & Competence Studies and Public Administration & Policy as co; organisers. The theme of the Dialogue aligns closely with Wageningen UR’s interest in linking technological and institutional innovation in ways that enable ‘science for impact’

Bringing troubled water: quality of experience in a mobile media context

The ICT environment went through notable changes, which have had an irreversible and strong influence on both ICT innovation processes and the role of end-users. In this context, technology developers are increasingly expected to take users’ experiences with technology into account during the process of developing applications or frameworks. As technology is more and more embedded in users’ daily lives, they seek out those personalized values to satisfy their own, situational needs. As a result, a thorough insight in users’ expectations and experiences at various levels (both explicit and more latent) and in different contexts (eg. mobile) has become a crucial determinant for the successful development, introduction and adoption of new ICTs. To this end, our paper focuses on the increased importance of Quality of Experience (QoE). It provides a conceptual model for QoE and furthermore discusses the prevalent gap that still exists between QoE and Quality of Service (QoS). Our main objective is to present a new methodology for correlating user experience to QoS parameters. This methodology was tested in the context of an exploratory interdisciplinary study on QoE-measurement. This new approach goes beyond QoS-parameters and aims to also grasp the social and contextual dimensions of users’ experiences

The quality of sustainability and the nature of open source software

The aim is to categorise Open Source Software as a commons based production process and resource. The definition of the commons is always accompanied by the doubt about its sustainability, the so-called "tragedy of the commons." Therefore it is worth to have a closer look on Open Source and why a "tragedy" does not appear

FOTE 2008 Conference Report

A report prepared by JA.Net and ULCC about the Future of Technology in Education (FOTE 2008) conference, Imperial College, 3rd October 2008. It covers the main speakers, themes and presentations: Cloud Computing, Second Life, Portability, Personalisation, Shared Services, Campus of the Future, Mobile Technology, Creativity and Media Production, Social Collaboration Tools for Staff and Students

The Abertay Code Bar – unlocking access to university-generated computer games intellectual poperty

Progress report on a digital platform and dual licensing model developed to unlock access to a University repository of new and legacy computer games based Intellectual Property (IP) assets for educational and commercial use. The digital creative industries have been identified by a number of governments as a priority area in delivering sustainable economic growth. Code Bar is an innovation that allows digital products to be commercially successful beyond the end of the Dare competition or coursework submission. To be selected for Code Bar, game products must be well designed for both player and market; technically robust (i.e. operating consistently and reliably on a single/multiple platforms), and be free from ambiguity around 3rd party IP. We describe various technical, pedagogic and legal challenges in developing the digital platform, licensing model and packaging of computer games products for release through the platform. The model is extendable beyond computer games to other software products

Include 2011 : The role of inclusive design in making social innovation happen.

Include is the biennial conference held at the RCA and hosted by the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. The event is directed by Jo-Anne Bichard and attracts an international delegation

Technological roots and structural implications of the double bubble at the turn of the Century

This paper argues that the two boom and bust episodes of the turn of the Century – the Internet mania and crash of 1990s and the easy liquidity boom and bust of 2000s– are two distinct components of a single structural phenomenon. They are essentially the equivalent of 1929 developed in two stages, one centred on technological innovation, the other on financial innovation. Hence, the frequent references to that crash, to the 1930s and to Bretton Woods, are not simple journalistic metaphors for interpreting the “credit crunch” and its solution, but rather the intuitive recognition of a fundamental similarity between those events and the current ones. The paper holds that such major boom and bust episodes are endogenous to the way in which the market economy evolves and assimilates successive technological revolutions. It will discuss why it occurred in two bubbles on this occasion; it examines the differences and continuities between the two episodes and presents an interpretation of their nature and consequences