Time to acknowledge the role of consumers in responsible innovation

Innovation is a complex and often uncertain evolutionary process that involves many actors, not just producers, argue Michael P. Schlaile, Matthias Mueller, Michael Schramm, and Andreas Pyk

Why we can’t go back to normal: 5 appeals for a sustainable post-pandemic economy

The pandemic creates much hardship but also shows us how quickly societies can adapt to necessary change, write the members of the University of Hohenheim’s department of innovation economic

Quo Vadis, Bioeconomy? the Necessity of Normative Considerations in the Transition

This collection of papers builds on the idea that the bioeconomy provides a framework for potentially effective solutions addressing the grand global challenges by a turn towards an increased use of biological resources, towards renewability and circularity. Consequently, it cannot be perceived as an end in itself. Thus, innovative endeavors within this bioeconomy framework require a serious examination of their normative premises and implications. From different perspectives, the five contributions to the collection demonstrate that for a bioeconomy that is to contribute to the transformation towards sustainability, inquiries into norms, values, and paradigms of innovators and other stakeholders are indispensable. Originating in the spirit of an interdisciplinary workshop on the "The Normative Dimension of Transformations towards a Sustainable Bioeconomy", the collection at hand provides an attempt to facilitate an increased commitment of social sciences into bioeconomy discourses. We learn: the bioeconomy is on the rise as it is, but whether it will guide us the way towards an equitable, environmentally sound, and future-proof economy, heavily depends on the normative guardrails imposed by science, society, and business. Recent discussions have shown that the pressing problems and complex challenges humanity is currently facing cannot be adequately tackled by approaches tha

Methodology to identify demand-side low-carbon innovations and their potential impact on socio-technical energy systems

The rapid diffusion of demand-side low-carbon innovations has been identified as a key strategy for maintaining average global temperature rise at or below 1.5 °C. Diffusion research tends to focus on a single sector, or single technology case study, and on a small scope of factors that influence innovation diffusion. This paper describes a novel methodology for identifying multiple demand-side innovations within a specific energy system context and for characterizing their impact on socio-technical energy systems. This research employs several theoretical frameworks that include the Energy Technology Innovation System (ETIS) framework to develop a sample of innovations; the Sustainability Transitions framework to code innovations for their potential to impact the socio-technical system; the energy justice framework to identify the potential of innovations to address aspects of justice; and how characteristics of innovations are relevant to Innovation Adoption. This coding and conceptualization creates the foundation for the future development of quantitative models to empirically assess and quantify the rate of low-carbon innovation diffusion as well as understanding the broader relationship between the diffusion of innovations and socio-technical system change. The three stages of research are: • Contextualization: surveys and desk research to identify low-carbon innovations across the ETIS; • Decontextualization: the development of a codebook of variables • Recontextualization: coding the innovations and analysis

Global Leadership in the context of Economic Moral Cultures : an inductive comparative analysis

Vor dem Hintergrund einer zunehmenden weltweiten Verflechtung wächst auch der Bedarf an Führungspersonen, welche die Heterogenität kulturell begründeter Moral- und Wertvorstellungen adäquat berücksichtigen können. Im Rahmen der Global Leadership Forschung setzt sich daher auch die Wissenschaft mit der gesteigerten Komplexität von effektiver und effizienter Führung im globalen Kontext auseinander. Das vorliegende Working Paper liefert zu diesem Forschungsgebiet einen Beitrag, indem theoretische und empirische Erkenntnisse anhand relevanter Literatur mit besonderem Fokus auf Führung in wirtschaftlichen Organisationen verknüpft werden. Das Kernstück stellt dabei eine detaillierte Analyse der drei Länder China, Türkei und Deutschland hinsichtlich (moral-)kultureller Prägung und Führungsverhalten dar. Auf Basis der empirischen Ergebnisse GEERT HOFSTEDEs und des Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness GLOBE) Forschungsprogramms wird dabei zunächst der grundsätzliche Zusammenhang zwischen Moralkultur und Führung untersucht. Darauf aufbauend wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob sich auf diese Weise auch universelle Führungsmerkmale und außerdem kulturelle Globalisierungstendenzen feststellen lassen. Unter kritischer Berücksichtigung sozialwissenschaftlicher Forschungsergebnisse kann dabei auch geschlussfolgert werden, dass die gegenseitige Wechselwirkung zwischen Moralkultur und Führung sowohl in der Theorie als auch in der Praxis oftmals eher unzureichend beachtet wird: Nicht nur (Moral) Cultures matter, sondern auch Global Leadership matters!Against the background of increasing global integration and interdependence it is no surprise that there is also an increase in demand for leaders which are able to appropriately consider the heterogeneity of culturally induced moral values. Thus, scientific research also seeks to understand and explain the impact of growing complexity on leadership efficiency and effectiveness within the field of Global Leadership. This working paper intends to make a contribution to this field by combining theoretical and empirical findings with its focus being on leadership in business organizations. A detailed analysis of China, Turkey, and Germany with respect to cultural context and leadership behavior thereby constitutes the central part of this paper. In the course of the analysis empirical findings from GEERT HOFSTEDE and the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Program (GLOBE) are used to investigate the basic relationship between Moral Culture and leadership. Building on those insights, the possibilities of identifying universally endorsed leadership traits as well as cultural trends towards globalization are examined. Based on a critical appraisal of social-scientific research results, it can be reasoned that the reciprocity of the interrelation between Moral Culture and leadership is often rather inadequately taken into account by both researchers and practitioners: It can not only be argued that (Moral)Cultures matter, but also that Global Leadership matters

Digital logic simulator with application to an asynchronous control module

The digital logic simulator contains an assortment of most commonly needed logic functions for designing small logic systems. The simulator is designed and constructed to conveniently implement ideas in logic system design and rapidly test changes. The problem designed and simulated on the logic simulator is an asynchronous control system typical of those used to control the access to a computer memory of two independent processors

Memes (Preprint)

This chapter makes the case for (re-)introducing memes into economics. While many scholars have (prematurely) rejected the notion of memes, it is argued that by taking memes more seriously, economists could establish links between fragmented approaches and overcome an apparent bias towards mostly intentional and “adaptive” processes of innovation and technological and economic change. Moreover, by embracing the meme’s eye view one can overcome questionable conceptions of creative genius and rationally optimizing agents, or at least complement them with a more naturalistic and informational perspective. In summary, studying memes means studying interconnected informational structures (often involving instructions) that can be socially transmitted—especially by imitation—and recombined, thus affording the emergence of innovations

Guidance and navigation for rendezvous with an uncooperative target

This paper presents a guidance strategy for a rendezvous with an uncooperative target. In the applied design reference mission, a spiral approach is commanded ensuring a collision-free relative orbit due to e/i-vector separation. The dimensions of the relative orbit are successively reduced by Δv commands which at the same time improve the observability of the relative state. The navigation is based on line-of-sight measurements. The relative state is estimated by an extended Kalman filter (EKF). The performance of this guidance and navigation strategy is demonstrated by extensive Monte Carlo simulations taking into account all major uncertainties like measurement errors, Δv execution errors, and differential drag