Anticipating Industry Convergence in the Context of Industry 4.0

© 2018 Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology, Inc. (PICMET). The merger of the digital and physical world in the context of Industry 4.0 is about to disrupt value chains and markets in almost every industry sector. In this context, the Internet of Things (IoT), enabling linkages and communication between physical and virtual objects, is the technological foundation of implementing Industry 4.0. In such a fast-paced environment, it is vital for companies to react quickly and exploit new business opportunities. One critical example is the interplay between logistics and information and communications technology (ICT) industries, where IoT has the potential to align goods and information flows in an unprecedented manner. The arising new functionalities, services and products show potential to blur the industries' boundaries and give birth to a whole new industry segment. Therefore, the present study strives to anticipate industry convergence between logistics and ICT industries in the realm of IoT. The empirical patent analysis is based on IPC co-classification and assignee structure. The analyses are refined along the different levels of IoT to provide detailed insights for companies where new technological and market competences need to be acquired

A Discipline-Spanning Overview of Action Research and Its Implications for Technology and Innovation Management

The iterative and learning character of action research is particularly beneficial for exploring complex socio-technical problems in technology and innovation management (TIM). In this respect, action research allows both rigorous and relevant research due to parallel solving of real-world problems, capability building, and gaining scientific insights. However, the use of action research within TIM research is surprisingly limited. Action research also is not a homogeneous research methodology since each research discipline, such as education and organizational science, has its own action research streams, which are often only loosely linked. A systematic overview of those action research traditions and specific best practices is still missing, which complicates a systematic transfer and use of action research in TIM. This article addresses this essential gap by building a cross-disciplinary overview of action research streams based on a bibliometric analysis using Scopus. The analysis includes relevant disciplines with action research traditions, their development over time, and the most influential journals, authors, institutions, and countries. Along with this discipline-spanning analysis, the article investigates particular TIM benefits and challenges of action research. The two key contributions of this article are: 1) a discipline-spanning overview of action research and its evolution and 2) an analysis of its implications for TIM research. These contributions build the basis for strengthening the use of action research in TIM. In the medium-term, action research has the capacity to link academia and industry more closely and, in doing so, assists important endeavours of translating more of our research outcomes into practice

Assessing value creation in digital innovation ecosystems: A Social Media Analytics approach

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. This paper explores the creation of value through the interactions of consumer and professional stakeholders in digital innovation ecosystems. We examine this by applying the methodological approach of Social Media Analytics (SMA) which is an interdisciplinary approach that seeks to combine, extend and adapt methods for analysing social media data. By utilising the SMA framework to track user-generated contents published on social media platforms, we assess how consumer and professional stakeholders associate value to Storytel, a new entrant in the Swedish publishing industry that is offering digital subscription service for streaming audiobooks. Drawing from a dataset of 2633 user-generated contents, our findings illustrate the value-creating practices in which stakeholders in Storytel's ecosystems associate value to Storytel's digital innovation. Our findings further highlight that the value-creating practices arising from the interactions of consumer and professional stakeholders in social media give rise to the hybridisation of value, where multiple values drawn from existing value categories become merged in the studied case. This study contributes to extant literature on management of innovation and information systems by (i) shedding light on how value is created by examining value-creating practices as a result of the interactions between stakeholders and (ii) examining the resulting merging of value categories within digital innovation ecosystems and thus exploring the hybridisation of value

A new framework to assess industry convergence in high technology environments

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd The process of convergence, from science and technology convergence to that of markets as well as entire industries can be witnessed in a range of different high technology environments such as IT and NanoBiotech. Although this phenomenon has been subject of analysis in an increasing number of studies, the notion of industry convergence – the final step of a full convergence process - still lacks a common definition. The missing conceptual definition of what industry convergence really is and how it can be assessed impedes both analyses and monitoring - let alone its anticipation. To address the missing conceptual definition of the final step in convergence, this paper seeks to develop a framework based on novel indicators that enable identifying and monitoring trends of industry convergence in high technology environments. Building on indicators in the domain of collaboration, a framework, which distinguishes different stages and types of industry convergence is developed. Subsequently, the newly developed framework is empirically illustrated in the area of stationary energy storage based on publicly available data. To this end, the full text database Nexis is used to conduct a search in news reports on collaborations in the domain of stationary energy storage. The study contributes to the growing body of convergence literature by providing a novel framework allowing the identification of not only industry convergence as the final step of the convergence process but also the classification of its type. Practical implications include an orientation for companies in converging environments on when and how to close the resulting technology and market competence gaps

Start-ups as technology life cycle indicator for the early stage of application: An analysis of the battery value chain

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Insights from battery research and development (R&D) need to be transferred into industrial application to create innovations and thus foster e.g. electro mobility. In terms of battery technology transfer, the early phase of application is particularly challenging due to the close intertwining between R&D and application. Therefore, the present study introduces start-ups as an additional indicator to capture the transition from science to industry within the technology life cycle. The findings show that despite highly dynamic R&D activities, technology transfer is only taking place on a very limited level. Surprisingly, start-ups focus on incremental improvements of existing technologies instead of introducing radical breakthrough-technologies. An analysis of the battery value chain reveals that opportunities for start-ups are rather located downstream in the value chain when integrating cells to battery systems and developing applications relying on innovative battery technologies. The findings contribute to the area of technology life cycle analysis explicitly using start-up companies as additional indicator for the critical transfer step from R&D to application. In a similar vein, technology forecasting literature, which is to date mainly focused on R&D, is expanded by a more application-centred perspective that allows identifying transfer opportunities along the technology value chain

Detection of Methyl Radicals in a Flat Flame by Degenerate Four-Wave Mixing

We report the spatially resolved detection of methyl radicals in a methane–air f lat flame, using degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM). A frequency-tripled dye laser pumped with a frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser was used to access the Herzberg b1 band of methyl near 216 nm. Using a nearly phase-conjugate geometry, we detected methyl with high spatial resolution [0.2 mm (0.3 mm) vertical (horizontal) and ,6 mm longitudinal] and with good signal-to-noise ratio in a rich sf _ 1.55d flame. Compared with laser absorption spectra, DFWM spectra were much less influenced by a broad featureless background. From the absorption data, we measured the peak methyl concentration to be 650 parts in 106, resulting in an estimated DFWM detection limit of 65 parts in 106.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/86762/1/Sick48.pd

Exploring the role of entrepreneurial passion for facilitating university technology commercialization: Insights from battery research as an interdisciplinary field

University-industry technology commercialization (UTC) from interdisciplinary environments is promising to contribute to solutions for major socio-economic challenges. However, UTC requires considerable coordination and mediation effort and thus intrinsic motivation from the involved researchers. Thus, the objective of the present study is to explore entrepreneurial passion as a means to facilitate researchers’ intrinsic motivation for UTC activities. The interdisciplinary field of battery research is used as a representative environment for the expert interview study. Drawing on qualitative content analysis, a framework is developed, which links researchers’ intrinsic motivation to respective UTC activities, resulting in three distinct UTC-promoting roles. Implications for policy makers seeking to promote UTC, for research managers responsible for the implementation of transfer projects as well as actors from industry who have an interest in collaborative R&D with public research institutions are provided