Stock of downstream complementary assets as a catalyst for product innovation during technological change in the U.S.

Research summary: We investigate the effect of incumbents\u27 stock of downstream complementary assets on their product innovation during a disruptive technological change. We theorize that a firm\u27s stock of downstream complementary assets, by providing critical information about shifting demand conditions, will play a catalytic role in firm adaptation during such a change. Using the advent of disruptive computer numerical control machine tools in the U.S. machine tool industry during the 1970s and 1980s as the context, we find that firms with greater stocks of downstream complementary assets are likely to be product innovation leaders during such a change. Managerial summary: Disruptive changes are challenging firms across industries. We concentrate on the U.S. machine tool industry during the 1970s and 1980s when Japanese manufacturers with disruptive computer numerical control systems challenged the U.S. manufacturers. We find that, under the threat of disruption, the greater the stock of downstream complementary assets a U.S. machine tool manufacturer has, the more likely it is to be the product innovation leader with the disruptive technology. Our findings provide novel insights for managers in companies that face disruptive changes and can help them avoid the consequences of such changes as predicted by prior research. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Missing the forest for the trees? Navigating the trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation under REDD

Forested landscapes play a critical role in mitigating climate change by sequesteringcarbon while at the same time fostering adaption by supporting ecosystem services, therecognition of which is reflected in the recent Paris Agreement on climate change. It has beensuggested, therefore, that the conservation of forested landscapes may provide a potential win-win in the fight against global environmental change. Despite the potential synergies betweenmitigation and adaptation efforts, recent studies have also raised concerns about possible trade-offs. Our research employs the analytic lens of social-ecological resilience to explore theintersection between mitigation and adaptation in the context of a Reduced Emissions fromDeforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) project in Lao PDR. Drawing on ecosystemanalyses, group discussions and interviews with policy makers, practitioners and resource-dependent communities, we identify three potential limitations of REDD for achieving climatesynergies. First, by disrupting existing disturbance regimes, REDD interventions run the riskof reducing diversity and structural heterogeneity and thus may undermine functional redun-dancy core to resilience. Second, REDD-as-practiced has tended to select local, rather thanstructural, drivers of deforestation, focusing disproportionately on curtailing local livelihoodpractices, reducing local resources for adaptation. Third, REDD risks redirecting ecosystemservice benefits away from local communities toward state agencies, incentivizing recentrali-zation and limiting the scope of local governance. We argue that REDD’s potential fordelivering synergies between climate change mitigation and adaptation in Laos is currentlyattenuated by structural factors rooted in development policies and broader political-economictrajectories in ways that may not be legible to, or adequately addressed by, current programmesand policy

Design for values in engineering

Values have probably always played a role in engineering design. However, in current practices and design methods, the attention for values in engineering design tends to be implicit and unsystematic. Establishing Design for Values in engineering would require overcoming this situation. This contribution discusses which values play a role in engineering and engineering design, describes existing methods and experiences with Design for Values in engineering, and explores how values can be integrated into engineering design and existing design methods, in particular quality function deployment (QFD). It identifies four challenges for Design for Values in engineering: (1) discovery of the values to be included in engineering design; (2) translation of these values into engineering characteristics; (3) choice among design options that meet different values to different degrees; and (4) verification of whether a design indeed embodies the intended values.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Values Technology and InnovationEthics & Philosophy of Technolog