Drivers of Consumers’ Emotional Engagement with Everyday Products: An Intensive Review of the Literature and an Attempt to Conceptualize the Consumer-Product Interactions Within the Emotional Design Process

This research intensively reviews the literature on designing emotional-driven products and aims to identify the drivers of the consumers’ emotional engagement with everyday products. The research also aims to develop a conceptual framework based on the basic model of product emotions and the classical process control, by which the identified emotional drivers in consumer products, the basic concerns of consumers, the context of the consumer-product interactions, and the design approach(s) would be interrelated and modeled. Furthermore, this research will study the psychological and theoretical perspectives on the human phenomenon of emotion to understand what does an emotion means, and why and how a human experiences emotion when interacts with stimulus (e.g. product), and how important and rewarding to design for emotions. The research has identified four basic concerns of every consumers; personal, cultural, social, and organizational (societal), and it suggests four emotional drivers; seeing-drivers, feeling-drivers, using-drivers, and touching-drivers. Moreover, as a result of the consumer-product interactions, two more emotional drivers are developing overtime to represent conclusive factors in consumer’s decision making process; product and brand experiences. These two emotional drivers also play the role as becoming new consumer’s concerns (emotional references) each time the consumer decide to buy a product

Assessing Photovoltaic Solar Technologies as a Solution for the Problem of Power Shortage in Iraq

In a developing country like Iraq, where the infrastructure of the electricity public sector (production, transportation, and distribution) has suffered for a long time from the direct effects of successive wars; lack of technocracy; bureaucracy; neglect; massive corruption; and much more, have all contributed to the failure of this sector. Indeed, the electricity sector in Iraq has not been developed for more than forty years; or even properly rehabilitated and/or maintained its facilities, which has led to a huge gap between the demand and supply (demand is double than the supply). It is obvious that the alternative solutions that have been proposed and implemented since 2003 have not become a solution that could fill even a small portion of the gap. In this paper, a proposed solution that seemingly has never been given a chance to be put on the table by both private and public sectors will be discussed. An assessment for photovoltaic solar panels technologies as an effective, viable, and quick solution for the infrastructure and demand problem was conducted using the Hierarchical Decision Model (HDM) as a methodology to assess the most efficient, and affordable candidate technologies relevant to all the valid perspectives and criteria

Nokia Phones: From a Total Success to a Total Fiasco

This research intensively reviews and analyzes the strategic management of technology at Nokia Corporation. Using traditional narrative literature review and secondary sources, we reviewed and analyzed the historical transformation of Nokia\u27s core business, leadership strategies, business architecture, R&D policy, innovation strategy, product lunch, and smartphones recognition and demonstration. We identified various strategic gaps that the previous analytical studies seemingly have missed to identify and generalize. Therefore, we add to the literature a bundle of the lessons learned that chronologically explain how Nokia failed to create and sustain competitive advantages, particularly in the smartphone market. We concluded that the problem at Nokia was not the lack of innovation, but rather, it was the lack of a precise technology forecasting, and misunderstanding that the needs in smartphone market were not just about demonstrating a mobile phone that makes calls, texts and connects to the web, but also the platform that operates all these functions together. Since Nokia\u27s brand name is recently back in the market through a newly licensed firm (HMD Global), we further discuss how likely the new Nokia\u27s smartphones will possibly compete and plausibly succeed in a very well-established market

Business Model Innovation: Review of The Concept, Importance, Classifications, and Elements

The research trend on business models continues to surge, foreseeing them as the future blueprint to create and sustain competitive advantages, as well as the major driver that guides the strategic renovation efforts of businesses all over the world. In this research, we intensively review the literature on the business model regarding the concept emergence, theoretical background, definitions, importance, classifications, and the structure of the elements. Our interest is in gaining a better understanding of how to innovate a business model that can lead to create and sustaincompetitive advantages. Based on our findings, the literature to date lacks the systematic research patterns and classification approaches that guide the interested researchers in adding more contributions to what already exists. Also, the fuzziness and ambiguity of the concept have caused a lack of consensus on its definition. However, we define the business model as; “the logical architecture that articulates and heedfully interrelates and regulates the internal and external business activities, whereby a firm can create, deliver and capture values that guarantee the development and sustainability of competitive advantages”. Furthermore, the existing predefined patterns and conceptual frameworks of the business models that we present in this study are forming a strong background on how primarily a business model can be designed and employed, yet, they cannot guarantee the feasibility and success of implementing them

Nokia’s Smartphones: What Happened, and What Possibly Happens? A Review of Nokia’s Strategic Management of Technology Prior to 2014, and an Analysis of the Current and Future Situations

This paper reviews Nokia’s strategic management of technology prior to 2014, and attempts to analyze the current situation as the company’s brand name is back in smartphones’ market. The paper discusses the historical transformation of Nokia’s core business and its transitioning into the market of the mobile phones, and how it succeeded in becoming the market’s leader till it failed in nailing the smartphones’ market despite it had the biggest and dominating share till 2007. However, in order to identify the strategic gaps behind Nokia’s loss of its leading position and failure to strategically compete in the smartphones’ market, this research is constructed to; (1) conducting an intensive literature review on the company’s historical changes and transformation prior to 2014, (2) studying Nokia’s current situation through applying the analysis of Porter\u27s five forces analysis, by which the potential critical factors that Nokia has to deal with as attempting to reenter this market will be identified, so that the company can strategically manage its resources and achieve competitive advantages. According to the analysis of the Porter’s five forces; Nokia currently in a situation to face a very high intensity of competitive rivalry, as well as moderate bargaining power or both buyers and suppliers, which require to develop stronger position in the ecosystem of the smartphones and to gain a significant market share through preparing a robust marketing plans for the new smartphones, Nokia 5, and Nokia 3

Achieving High Reliability Organizations Using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps - the Case of Offshore Oil and Gas

The safety culture of so-called high-reliability organizations (HROs) encompasses values, routines, and work processes that allow an organization to prevent mistakes and quickly bounce back if unexpected events occur. It is said to provide a model for improving organizational resilience in the offshore oil and gas industry, where small errors can grow into accidents with devastating environmental, social, and economic impacts. To date, such a transfer of successful practices is impeded by a lack of system perspective that would allow researchers and practitioners to fully understand the safety dynamics in HROs, adjust them to the unique setting of offshore oil and gas, plan safety interventions, and anticipate the direct and indirect effects of these interventions. In this dissertation, I developed and rigorously tested a model of how safety interventions impact interdependent aspects of HROs\u27 characteristics, based on peer-reviewed research, an industry workshop, and a survey of offshore oil and gas industry practitioners. This approach combines the qualitative research method of Thematic Analysis (TA), Thematic Network (TN), Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM) modeling and simulation, and Exploratory Modelling and Analysis (EMA). Furthermore, I developed thematic proximity as a measure for determining edges\u27 weights in FCMs that are based on research texts, thus reducing the need for including subject matter experts in modeling studies. This work makes several contributions: on a theoretical level, it shows the inherent dynamics of HROs and points to several limitations in existing High Reliability Organizations Theory (HROT) as well as uncertainties regarding the efficacy of some safety interventions. On a practical level, it provides a planning tool for safety decision-makers that can also serve as the foundation of future safety culture training. Finally, it makes several contributions to FCM methodology, namely a model architecture that combines knowledge from the literature with that of human experts, the introduction of thematic proximity coefficient, and the adaptation of model testing strategies from the literature on Systems Dynamics

Listening to the Well, Listening to Each Other, and Listening to the Silence-New Safety Lessons from Deepwater Horizon Comment

It is common for accident reports and the analysis of large-scale disasters, such as the Deepwater Horizon blowout, to point to communication failures. This narrow explanation implicitly assumes that accidents could be prevented if employees spoke up about safety. In contrast, the first author of this paper, whose professional experience is introduced in this Commentary to provide context, has frequently observed that there are, in fact, many cases when employees speak up but are not listened to. These patterns of communication (or lack thereof) occur at the intersection of personal, leadership, and organizational factors, which jointly affect how safety issues are recognized, communicated, and addressed. As such, communication problems are at “the tip of the iceberg” of safety problems, not at their root. In this paper, we review research on high-reliability organizations (HROs) with excellent safety records to identify their communication patterns and practices and how they contribute to the ability to enact five principles of HROs: preoccupation with failure, reluctance to simplify, deference to expertise, commitment to resilience, and sensitivity to operations. We then apply this lens to investigate the Deepwater Horizon disaster, based on court documents, expert reports, and personal interviews. Specifically, we investigate how the communication patterns between the onshore experts and the offshore crews compared to the recommendations of HRO theory and how existing discrepancies might help explain the accident. We found that many employees were aware of safety issues and communicated concerns openly, but there was little organizational response to the issues they raised. This failure to listen was largely owed to factors that were not directly related to communication, such as time pressure and lack of resources, and a culture that valued a “can do attitude” and getting things done so much that it got in the way of sensitivity to operations, expert-based guidance, and communication about problems. Moreover, the challenges of the project and its aggressive timeline created an extreme, almost toxic, commitment to resilience. Based on these findings, we discuss recommendations for improving safety in offshore oil and gas production

Assessing the Photovoltaic Solar Technologies as a Solution for Power Shortage in Iraq

In a developing country like Iraq, where the infrastructure of the electricity public sector (production, transportation, and distribution) has suffered for a long time from the direct effects of successive wars; lack of technocracy; bureaucracy; neglect; massive corruption; and much more, have all contributed to the failure of this sector. Indeed, the electricity sector in Iraq has not been developed for more than forty years; or even properly rehabilitated and/or maintained, which has led to a huge gap between the demand and supply (demand is double than the supply). It is obvious that the alternative solutions that have been proposed, and implemented since 2003 have not become a solution that could fill even a small portion of the gap. In this paper, a proposed solution that seemingly has never been given a chance to be put on the table by both the private and public sectors will be discussed. An assessment for photovoltaic solar panels technologies as an effective, viable, and quick solution for the infrastructure and demand problem was conducted using the Hierarchical Decision Model (HDM) as a methodology to assess the most efficient, and affordable candidate technologies relevant to all the valid perspectives and criteria. The technology candidates selected for the assessment process were Crystalline Silicon (C-Si), Cadmium telluride photovoltaics (CdTe), Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS). The finding shows that the C-Si is the favorable technology for the Iraq situation

Meet ARA, The Modular Phone Marketing Plan Report and Research Log

Project ARA is an initiative that aims to develop an open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. This initiative provides a vehicle to support Google’s overall mission of organizing and connecting the world\u27s data making it not only useful but universally accessible. Data suggests that mobile technology, such as smartphones is significantly increasing in usage, so much that it is doubling that of laptop/desktop usage. Supporting data shows since 2008, mobile devices have been on a steep increase of usage [1] [2]. Google is using Project ARA to infiltrate this increasing mobile market by using the idea of a modular smartphone to not only meet the customer needs of customization but also to continue Google’s mission and demand for more data usage