Exploring technology acceptance for mobile services

Purpose: Mobile phone industries are no longer relying on voice services. It is predicted that data services are expected to be a remediation for the declining of average revenue per user (ARPU) in telecommunication market. The purpose of this paper is to find the factors that influence the acceptance/adoption of mobile services. Design/methodology/approach: This paper utilizes quantitative method. Questionnaire were distributed to collect the data. The questionnaires are designed specifically to address the factors related to mobile services. Later on, this paper uses Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) and Cluster analysis to identify the factors that influence the adoption of mobile services. Findings: The results show that ease of use and usefulness are top two factors that influence the adoption of mobile services. Research limitations/implications: The sample for the study is relatively small. For future research, the sample should be increased. The data collection should also look into different devices and operating system of mobile phones to find if there is any significant difference in adopting mobile services. Practical implications: This framework is expected to be able to help the mobile services provider to design better mobile services that can attract users to adopt them

Characterization of the Relationship Between Firms and Universities and Innovation Performance: The Case of Colombian Firms

Within the National Innovation System, universities play a key role as the main source of knowledge that supports national productivity and as a system that seeks to improve the competitiveness of firms competitiveness and to find answers concerning market needs in today’s fast-changing and globalized economy. Innovation, as a source of competitiveness, is normally supported by a firm’s technological capabilities: internal R&D, external collaborative agreements, and relationships with universities. This study uses a cluster analysis to identify three clusters that represent respectively those firms that interact closely with universities for technology development (which include R&D projects) and technological learning activities, those firms that interact with universities for technological learning only, and those that do not have any kind of relationship with universities. We also analyze the innovation performance of each cluster. Data here come from the Second Colombian Innovation Survey, which was applied in 2005 to a sample of 6,222 firms. Among the main results, this study shows a higher innovation performance for those firms with relevant linkages for technology learning activities

Technology Forecasting for Wireless Communication

Wireless communications technologies have undergone rapid changes over the last 30 years from analog approaches to digital-based systems. These technologies have improved on many fronts including bandwidth, range, and power requirements. Development of new telecommunications technologies is critical. It requires many years of efforts. In order to be competitive, it is critical to establish a roadmap of future technologies. This paper presents a framework to characterize, assess and forecast the wireless communication technologies. A DEA-based methodology was used for predicting the state-of-the-art in future wireless communications technologies

Technology Foresight: A Bibliometric Analysis to Identify Leading and Emerging Methods

Foresight studies provide essential information used by the government, industry and academia for technology planning and knowledge expansion. They are complicated, resource-intensive, and quite expensive. The approach, methods, and techniques must be carefully identified and selected. Despite the global importance of foresight activities, there are no frameworks to help one develop and plan a proper foresight study. This paper begins Keywords: technology foresight; strategic foresight; adaptive foresight; Social Network Analysis (SNA); bibliometric tools; data mining; text mining. to close this gap by analyzing and comparing different schools of thought and updating the literature with the most current tools and methods. Data mining techniques are used to identify articles through an extensive literature review. Social Network Analysis (SNA) techniques are used to identify and analyze leading journals, articles, and researchers. A framework is developed here to provide a guide to help in the selection of methods and tools for different approaches

Exploring Linkage of Quality Management to Innovation

In many business sectors today, focus on quality as a competitive tool is being replaced by a focus on innovation. Research exploring connections between quality management, innovation, and company performance suggests that quality is ‘necessary but insufficient’ in business today. In short, managers need to know how to adapt their quality management practices to achieve innovation performance in addition to quality performance. West coast U.S. forest products manufacturers were surveyed about their quality management practices and performance with respect to both quality and innovation. Results were analyzed to identify two categories of high-performing firms: those achieving primarily quality outcomes and those achieving both quality and innovation outcomes. Executives from firms in each category were interviewed to provide detail on management practices. Results suggest firms must first change how they view innovation; firms that were primarily focused on quality rather than innovation viewed innovation as an end rather than the means to some other business goal. The most significant finding is related to how firms interact with customers – firms focused on innovation proactively seek to identify and meet customers’ needs whereas quality-focused firms primarily emphasize reacting to customer complaints. Findings suggest several areas where managers can focus to improve innovation performance

Perspective: Technology Management in the Service Sector

This paper reports out of the symposium on \u27Technology Management in the Service Sector\u27 which was held as a part of Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology in 2007. The objectives of the symposium were: to explore how technology management research and education can contribute to the evolving field of services science, management and engineering; to define a research agenda for the field of engineering and technology management that addresses the critical needs of the evolving service economy and to discuss needed funding structures and programs to foster service oriented research. We tackled these issues in two ways. First, the key leaders from academia, industry and government presented the critical issues and challenges that presently exist. Then, small groups analysed the selected topics in depth. We identified three main components of service science: value, people and technology, and explored how researchers in the field of technology management would tackle this new phenomenon

Impacto dos fatores de interação homem-máquina no Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software design

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems integrate processes and functions across the company by using a single data repository. Today ERP systems are not only accepted as simple software packages but a core engine of a framework for business processes. Since adopters of ERP systems have a great number of alternatives during the selection process, software vendors should differentiate their product. Various differentiation policies can be applied by software vendors to achieve competitive advantage in the market. This paper is focusing on one of these policies; area of man-machine interaction. In this study, first, adaptive and intelligent characteristics for the user interface of the ERP package were explored by conducting survey to ERP system end-users. In this survey, we primarily aim to understand and model the factors that are affecting end-user satisfaction with the ERP system and its interface design. The results indicate that ease of use (EoU) and usefulness are determinants of end-user satisfaction with ERP system and its interface design. This paper discusses these findings, the models that we were inspired while we had been forming our model, our model framework and finally describes future study opportunities about human and computer interaction analysis and prototyping studies in ERP systems

R&D Management Trends in the United States, India and China

This study researches the Management of Research and Development (R&D) in the emerging economies of India and China and compares theirs with R&D in the United States (US). The purpose of this research is to forecast the future of R&D in these three countries. Because R&D is changing rapidly, particularly in China, understanding where they will be in the future is of interest to the scientific, academic, government and business segments of each country. Our research consisted of gathering industry standard measures of R&D from 1996 through 2009. These measures are as follows: R&D spending as a percentage of GDP (total government, industry and universities), researchers per million inhabitants, number of patents granted each year, number publications each year and total number of graduates in all programs in thousands. We gathered and logged the metrics for each year from 1996 through 2009 and used the historical data to forecast future positioning of R&D in these countries. An overview of each country is provided in the introductory portion of this paper. This provides the context for the historical performance of R&D and for expected future performance of R&D in the US, India and China