Social capital as critical success factor for innovation development processes in industrialised regions, case study RIS-Silesia in the Silesia Voivodship (Poland)

Pace and success of transformation of traditional national economies into competitive network-based economies in a global environment in such countries like Poland - countries currently facing intensive economic reconversion - is mainly depending on the role and capacities of regional economic centres in initiating and developing pro-innovative processes. These economic centres, among which the Slaskie Voivodeship, are often characterised by long tradition in heavy, labour- and raw materials intensive industries such as the mining, metallurgic and chemical sector. The Slaskie Voivodeship is placed among the leading regions of Poland as for its social and economic potential. It is characterised by a high number of inhabitants (4.8m. people) living on a relatively small area (3.9% of Poland), resulting in a high population density (3.2 times more than the country’s average). In 2000, the Slaskie Voivodeship was placed second in Poland (behind the Mazowieckie Voivodeship) as concerns its economic potential measured in Gross Domestic Product . The Slaskie Voivodeship is currently playing a pilot role in Poland in developing networks and systems around a regional innovation strategy. More than 150 organisations (R&D institutes, institutes of higher education, SMEs, large companies, local governments, NGO’s) are involved in this process. The paper will – based on the case study of the Slaskie Voivodeship - include problem areas and solutions concerning development of pro-innovative co-operation networks and will discuss the issue of trust between organisations as critical factor in innovation strategy building and implementation processes. The document will also present a methodology related to intellectual capital, among which social capital, as key-condition in the above-mentioned process.

Social-cultural aspects of the functioning of an institutional network, which is the base for the regional pro-innovating strategy implementation

A technology transfer is a key to an efficient innovating strategy implementation process. The institutional network should support this process. The aim of the paper is to point out the 'soft' circumstances which appear when institutions start to co-operate in such network. Furthermore some directions will be given how to face with negative circumstances. In the first part of the paper the social cultural aspects of cooperation between institutions within the network will be presented. The analyse will be mainly focused on processes of autonomisation and enclosing on an external cooperation in these institutions. The second part of the paper is a case study. A creation process of technological parks at the Silesian region will be analysed. Using this example the methods of dealing with difficulties which are discussed will be demonstrated.

Social capital as critical success factor for innovation development processes in industrialised regions, case study RIS-Silesia in the Silesia Voivodship (Poland)

Pace and success of transformation of traditional national economies into competitive network-based economies in a global environment in such countries like Poland - countries currently facing intensive economic reconversion - is mainly depending on the role and capacities of regional economic centres in initiating and developing pro-innovative processes. These economic centres, among which the Slaskie Voivodeship, are often characterised by long tradition in heavy, labour- and raw materials intensive industries such as the mining, metallurgic and chemical sector. The Slaskie Voivodeship is placed among the leading regions of Poland as for its social and economic potential. It is characterised by a high number of inhabitants (4.8m. people) living on a relatively small area (3.9% of Poland), resulting in a high population density (3.2 times more than the country’s average). In 2000, the Slaskie Voivodeship was placed second in Poland (behind the Mazowieckie Voivodeship) as concerns its economic potential measured in Gross Domestic Product . The Slaskie Voivodeship is currently playing a pilot role in Poland in developing networks and systems around a regional innovation strategy. More than 150 organisations (R&D institutes, institutes of higher education, SMEs, large companies, local governments, NGO’s) are involved in this process. The paper will – based on the case study of the Slaskie Voivodeship - include problem areas and solutions concerning development of pro-innovative co-operation networks and will discuss the issue of trust between organisations as critical factor in innovation strategy building and implementation processes. The document will also present a methodology related to intellectual capital, among which social capital, as key-condition in the above-mentioned process

Social-cultural aspects of the functioning of an institutional network, which is the base for the regional pro-innovating strategy implementation

A technology transfer is a key to an efficient innovating strategy implementation process. The institutional network should support this process. The aim of the paper is to point out the 'soft' circumstances which appear when institutions start to co-operate in such network. Furthermore some directions will be given how to face with negative circumstances. In the first part of the paper the social cultural aspects of cooperation between institutions within the network will be presented. The analyse will be mainly focused on processes of autonomisation and enclosing on an external cooperation in these institutions. The second part of the paper is a case study. A creation process of technological parks at the Silesian region will be analysed. Using this example the methods of dealing with difficulties which are discussed will be demonstrated

The problem with a peremptory challange : a tool of racial discrimination within American jury selection process

Jury duty serves as one of the fundamental pillars of American democracy, for it encourages direct citizen participation. Yet, the process of selecting its members is characterised by a flaw in form of a peremptory challenge — a tool with considerable potential for abuse since it permits covert discrimination against members of visible minority groups. Despite not being a procedural right protected by the Constitution of the United States, peremptories have entered the canon of provisions thought to be necessary for preserving the fairness of trial due to their long history of employment in the legal system. In the late 1980s, the Supreme Court in Batson v. Kentucky ruled the exclusion of jurors solely on the basis of their race to be unconstitutional and established the first preventative procedural standard against dubious usage of peremptories in form of the Batson Rule. The effectiveness of the said standard remains questionable, for it did not successfully deal with racial discrimination during voir dire but only enabled to formally object to the questionable juror’s strike. This paper aims to put racial discrimination within the American jury system into a historical perspective, analyze the arguments of both the supporters and the opponents of further peremptory challenge usage and consider probable alternatives that might be implemented to successfully prevent discriminatory practices within the American jury selection process

Visitors\u27 delayed responses to interpretive talks and interpreters\u27 expectations for visitor responses

National Park visitors\u27 delayed responses to interpretive talks are examined and compared to professional interpreters\u27 expectations for visitor responses to interpretive talks. The premise is that through an understanding of visitors\u27 delayed responses, interpretive programs can be refined to further the goals of visitor learning and appreciation as well as the development of a sense of stewardship. Informal learning theory, schema theory, and constructivist learning theory provide a conceptual and theoretical framework for the research. Visitors to nine U.S. National Parks participated in a computer-assisted telephone survey/interview eight months after attending an on-site interpretive talk (n=283, response rate 86%). Questions were designed to assess their lasting perceptions of the interpretative talk. Further, visitors were asked to describe what elements of the experience were most memorable. In the second component of the study, 640 permanent interpreters employed by the National Park Service (NPS) (response rate 56%) responded to a census web survey exploring: 1) expectations for visitors\u27 responses to interpretive talks, using questions that paralleled those asked of the visitors, and 2) beliefs about what leads to memorable experiences at an interpretive talk. Analyses revealed that a majority of visitors were able to describe memorable experiences, categorized as either general (n = 89; 32%) or talk/topic specific (n = 150, 53%). Interpreters suggested five major themes believed to lead to memorable experiences: interpreter/ranger skills, relevance, connections, learning, and involvement. Items that were comparable for visitors\u27 perceptions and interpreters\u27 expectations for responses were strongly correlated (Rho = .834, p≤.001). The implication is that visitors value experiences where interpreters actively seek to engage the audience. Further, interpretive talks can have a measurable impact on visitors\u27 long-term memories. Informal learning theory, constructivist learning theory, and schema theory provide useful perspectives from which to understand the process and results of engagement. While interpreters recognize the need for and value of engaging visitors, this knowledge may not always translate into practice. Training that emphasizes visitor engagement at multiple levels is essential for memorable interpretive talks

Documents Clustering techniques

Documents Clustering is a technique in which relationships between sets of documents are being automatically discovered and documents are divided into groups of similar specimens. The groups that are created during the process of clustering should be specified by the high degree of similarity between the elements that belong to the same group and low degree of similarity between the elements that belong to different groups. Such way of organizing documents allows the user to review content quickly and makes it easier to retrieve particularly interesting information. The following article describes the most popular documents clustering techniques and issues associated with it, like: text documents representation and similarity measure of documents. Additionally, the author is going to introduce his own concept of new effective method of documents clustering based on Ant System

ACO-based document clustering method

Ant systems are flexible to implement and give possibility to scale because they are based on multi agent cooperation. The aim of this publication is to show the universal character of that solution and potentiality in implementing it in wide areas of applications. The increase of demand for effective methods of large document collections management is a sufficient stimulus to place the research on the new application of ant based systems in the area of text document processing. Hitherto existing far generated ant based clustering methods are presented and briefly described at the beginning of that article. Next, the author defines the ACO (Ant Colony Optimization) meta-heuristic, which was the basis of the method developed by him. Presentation of the details of the ant based documents clustering method is the main part of publication

ACO documents clustering - details of processing and results of experiments

Ant algorithms, particularly Ant Colony Optimization met-heuristic, are a universal and flexible solution. In this publication the author presents the implementation of that technique in the documents clustering area - the new documents clustering method. The aim of this document is to present the details of the ACO documents clustering method, potential ways to optimize its processing and detail results of experiments