Editorial : living labs and user innovation (December 2015)

Welcome to the January 2016 issue of the Technology Innovation Management Review – the second of two issues on the theme of Living Labs and User Innovation. It is my pleasure welcome back our guest editors for December and January: Seppo Leminen (Laurea University of Applied Sciences and Aalto University, Finland), Dimitri Schuurman (iMinds and Ghent University, Belgium), Mika Westerlund (Carleton University, Canada), and Eelko Huizingh (University of Groningen, Netherlands)

Teaching Engineering Ethics in the Classroom through a Town Hall Meeting Activity

Engineers often contribute to projects that impact many people and have ethical implications. Some may even move to a career of political advocacy and policy-making. However, most engineering curricula have a strongly technical focus and do not require students to think critically about ethical issues related to engineering. To bridge this gap, we developed a classroom-based town hall meeting activity that demonstrates the ethical issues that may arise when engineers are advocating for or helping craft public policies. Our town hall meeting scenario, which was set in a fictional tourist town called Rainbow Town, divided a class of twenty engineering students into groups of engineers, politicians, and voters. There were two opposing political groups and two engineering groups with competing interests. The voters had individual characters with varying careers and objectives. The town hall meeting was a debate on whether Rainbow Town should undertake a construction project that would bring jobs to the city, but could potentially adversely impact fish population at the town’s natural heritage site, the main source of income for the town. The objective of the activity varied based on what role each student was playing. The politicians’ job was to further the objectives of their own party while simultaneously keeping their voter base happy. The engineers’ job was to help voters make an informed decision about which policy (or party) to vote for, while helping politicians craft the right policy. The voters’ job was to protect their own livelihoods. Despite the simplicity of the town hall meeting scenario, the students wholeheartedly donned the mantle of their assigned role, taking the objectives of their role seriously. At the post-activity debrief, students commented that the activity was harder on the engineers since they had to prove everything with facts, but the politician groups did not.Cockrell School of Engineerin

The nature and implications of the part-time employment of secondary school pupils

This paper reports on the results of a review of existing measures of enterprising skills and attitudes. The review was undertaken firstly to identify definitions of enterprising skills and attitudes and secondly to inform the design of the questionnaire of school pupils and of the focused studies. It has been written by Linda Brownlow and Sheila Semple, both members of the research team. This paper is being circulated to advisory group members only at this stage [2004]

The Critical Incident Technique

{Excerpt} Organizations are often challenged to identify and resolve workplace problems. The Critical Incident technique gives them a starting point and a process for advancing organizational development through learning experiences. It helps them study “what people do” in various situations. One might think there are no answers to the following questions: How fast can you think on your feet? How do you react in the face of the unexpected? How can you prepare if you cannot predict? And yet, there are. Evidently, some behaviors contribute to the successor failure of individuals—and organizations—in specific situations. And so, responses to the unforeseen lie in identifying before the fact events or circumstances, or series of them, that are outside the range of ordinary human experiences. The questions posed earlier are as old as mankind; but our ability to address them owes largely to the relatively recent work of John Flanagan. These days critical incidents can be harvested to provide a rich, personal perspective of life that facilitates understanding of the issues and obstacles people face every now and then and illuminates avenues for improvement (or replication if outcomes are effective)—avenues that may not be apparent through purely quantitative methods of data collection. This should matter to high-performance organizations

Spot Your Leadership Style – Build Your Leadership Brand

The purpose of the research paper is to present various leadership styles with illustrations of international leader types. It helps the reader spot a particular leadership style for building a leadership brand. It attempts to motivate senior level leaders to appreciate what style of leadership is essential in the current scenario

Collaborative model development increases trust in and use of scientific information in environmental decision-making

While science matters for environmental management, creating science that is credible, salient to decision-makers, and deemed legitimate by stakeholders is challenging. Collaborative modeling is an increasingly-used approach to enable effective science-based decision-making. This work evaluates the modeling process conducted for two hydropower dam licensing negotiations, to explore how differences in the collaborative development of hydrological models affected differences in their use in subsequent decision-making. In one case, the model was developed iteratively through deliberation with stakeholders. Consequently, stakeholders understood the model and its limitations and trusted the model and modelers; the model itself was also better designed to evaluate resource managers’ questions. The collaboratively-developed model became the focal point for subsequent negotiations and enabled creative group problem-solving. Conversely, in the case with less engagement during model development, the model was not used subsequently by decision-makers. These differences are argued to result from trust built during the modeling process, applicability of the model to test real management scenarios, and the broader social context in which the models were used

Clean Power Players: Landing a Job in Clean Energy

A new, first-of-its-kind guidebook by Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) offers practical, how-to advice for young people seeking careers in clean energy

Advancing Climate Change Research and Hydrocarbon Leak Detection : by Combining Dissolved Carbon Dioxide and Methane Measurements with ADCP Data

With the emergence of largescale, comprehensive environmental monitoring projects, there is an increased need to combine state-of-the art technologies to address complicated problems such as ocean acidifi cation and hydrocarbon leak detection

INFLUENCE OF A BRAND IMAGE IN DEVELOPING A TOURISM DESTINATION – CASE VUOKATTI

The purpose of this thesis was to study the development of tourism in Vuokatti. The aim was to find out how tourism has developed in the Vuokatti area in years 2000 – 2008 and make a power point presentation of the findings for Pohjolan Mylly. The theoretical part of the thesis consists of some of the main tourism development and marketing theories, but the main focus is on Thomas Gad’s 4D brand model. Pohjolan Mylly is the only advertising agency in Finland which uses Thomas Gad’s 4D brand model as a basis for its marketing. The results have been positive and therefore prove the model’s usefulness. We used secondary data to carry out our research. The numbers were put into diagrams and graphs which are easy to interpret. There is no earlier research made on this subject during this time period and Pohjolan Mylly really needs this kind of data to show their current and potential customers. Vuokatti is the most popular and fastest growing tourism destination in Finland at the moment. One reason for this is that Vuokatti is so versatile both in winter and also in summertime. Vuokatti is a very strong brand and functional marketing and networking with the municipality of Sotkamo, sport clubs, and local tourism companies have had a big influence on the development of Vuokatti’s image. Positive images about Vuokatti have attracted tourists from Finland, Russia and Europe.Tämän lopputyön aiheena oli tutkia Vuokatin matkailun kehitystä. Tarkoituksena oli selvittää kuinka matkailu on kehittynyt Vuokatin alueella vuosina 2000–2008 ja tehdä lopputuotteena power point -esitys saaduista tuloksista Pohjolan Myllylle. Opinnäytetyön teoreettinen osuus koostuu muutamasta keskeisimmästä matkailun kehitys- ja markkinointiteoriasta mutta pääpaino on Thomas Gadin 4D-brandimallilla. Pohjolan Mylly on tällä hetkellä Suomessa ainoa markkinointiyritys, joka käyttää Thomas Gadin 4D brandimallia pohjana alueen markkinoinnissa. Tulokset ovat positiivisia ja näin ollen todistavat mallin käyttökelpoisuuden. Käytimme toissijaisia lähteitä toteuttaessamme tätä tutkimusta. Luvuista tehtiin kaavioita ja taulukoita, joita on helppo tulkita. Tällaista tutkimusta ei ole aikaisemmin tehty Vuokatista tältä aikaväliltä ja Pohjolan Mylly kaipaa tällaista tietoa voidakseen esittää ne nykyisille ja tuleville asiakkailleen. Vuokatti on tällä hetkellä suosituin ja nopeimmin kasvava matkailukeskus Suomessa. Yksi syy tähän on Vuokatin monipuolisuus sekä kesällä että talvella. Vuokatti on erittäin vahva brandi. Toiminnallisella markkinoinnilla ja verkostoitumisella Sotkamon kunnan kanssa, urheiluseuroilla ja alueen matkailuyrityksillä on ollut suuri vaikutus Vuokatin imagon kehittymiseen. Vuokatin positiivinen imago on houkutellut matkailijoita Suomesta, Venäjältä ja Euroopasta