The Caravan Rolls On

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68409/2/10.1177_107554707900100103.pd

Perspectives on design and innovation

A series of studies of top European and other firms has revealed patterns of design management associated with commercial success. Firms that invest resources and professional expertise in product and industrial design in traditional and new industries have been more commercially successful than firms that pay less attention to these aspects of design. As an industry matures there is a shift in emphasis from design associated with technological innovation, to designs supporting technical improvements, and then to supporting user needs, fashion and product variants. These issues are illustrated through the history of the evolution of the bicycle

Supporting innovation through HR policy: evidence from the UK

This paper focuses on the relationship between the importance of innovation for organizations and their human resources policy. Drawing on survey findings, we examine the coherence of organizations’ utilization of HR recruitment, training and performance management policies to support and enhance firms’ innovation performance. Through a social–psychological perspective, we situate our findings in two diverse areas: the psychological literature, exploring the measurement of innovation, and second, with regard to the internal (with each other) and external (with broader organizational objectives) integration of distinct HR policy elements. Our surveyed organizations indicate that, whilst attaching importance to innovation, they fail to consistently translate this importance into coherent HR policies. Typically, HR policy rewarded non-managerial employees for innovation, whilst managerial staff were expected to do so as a matter of course. This inconsistency is one source of resistance which blocks the generation of new ideas, and their implementation, organization-wide

Idea sets: conceptualizing and measuring a new unit of analysis in entrepreneurship research

Idea sets—the complete stock of entrepreneurial ideas an individual has accessible within his or her memory at any given time—are proposed as a new unit of analysis through which the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition may be more fully understood. A number of dimensions are identified along which one person’s idea set may be compared with that of another person. These comprise the novelty, volume, content, stage of development, strategic value logic, and composite knowledge configuration of ideas within the idea set. The idea set construct and the methods advocated for its empirical operationalization provide a differentiated, comprehensive approach to investigating entrepreneurial opportunities. They also help to overcome sample selection and survival biases characterizing empirical research in this domain. A questionnaire-based idea set instrument, designed and tested in the corporate context, demonstrates good evidence of content, convergent and divergent validities

Uncertainty, learning and technology adoption in agriculture

National audienceAdoption of agricultural innovations has been an important factor affecting the welfare of farmers, the productivity of agriculture and the economics of the food sector. This paper reviews the literature on technology adoption in agriculture with a focus on the role of uncertainty and learning. It examines the factors affecting adoption benefits for farmers and their linkages with the innovation process. It also discusses the welfare implications of innovation and adoption for farmers and consumers