External End Users and Firm Innovation Performance

Research about users as a source of innovation has been largely restricted to case studies exploring specific innovation projects at the firm level. This study assesses empirically the relationship between external end users' knowledge as an input factor to innovation and firms' innovation success. The results strongly support the hypotheses: (i) that external end users have the potential to essentially improve the innovative performance of firms; (ii) that the technique of interaction during the innovation process and the characteristics of involved external users matter as well. The more firms make use of emphatic design and select specific users to acquire hard-to-articulate customer needs, the stronger is the relationship between access to external end users' knowledge and firm innovation success measured in sales of innovative products

A Compact Lowpass Filter with Ultra Wide Stopband using Stepped Impedance Resonator

In this paper, a compact asymmetric-shaped microstrip lowpass filter (LPF) using a stepped impedance resonator is presented. An ultra wide stopband with high attenuation in the stopband region, within very small circuit area is achieved for the proposed filter using novel asymmetric structures for resonator and suppressor. The transmission zeros of the resonators can be adjusted as a function of high impedance and low impedance microstrip lines, and due to the asymmetric structure, the proposed suppressing cell can be located within the resonator structure without occupying a large area. For verification, a 2.92 GHz LPF is designed and fabricated. The experimental results, in comparison with the other LPFs, show that the proposed LPF has significant advantages in the stopband characteristics with acceptable sharp roll off. The measured passband insertion loss is below 0.1 dB, and the rejection band over -20 dB is obtained from 3.42 GHz to 36.2 GHz. The size of filter corresponds to compact electrical size of 0.156 λg × 0.128 λg, where λg is the guided wavelength at 2.92 GHz. Also, the maximum variation of the group delay in 80 percent of the passband region is only about 0.2 ns