Technology management - Structuring the strategic dialogue

Successful innovation requires effective communication within and between technical and nontechnical communities, which can be challenging due to different educational backgrounds, experience, perceptions, and attitudes. Roadmapping has emerged as a method that can enable effective dialogue between these groups, and the way in which information is structured is a key feature that enables this communication. This is an area that has not received much attention in the literature, and this article seeks to address this gap by describing in detail the structures that have been successfully applied in roadmapping workshops and processes, from which key learning points and future research directions are identified.

Combining interest points and edges for content-based image retrieval

This paper presents a novel approach using combined features to retrieve images containing specific objects, scenes or buildings. The content of an image is characterized by two kinds of features: Harris-Laplace interest points described by the SIFT descriptor and edges described by the edge color histogram. Edges and corners contain the maximal amount of information necessary for image retrieval. The feature detection in this work is an integrated process: edges are detected directly based on the Harris function; Harris interest points are detected at several scales and Harris-Laplace interest points are found using the Laplace function. The combination of edges and interest points brings efficient feature detection and high recognition ratio to the image retrieval system. Experimental results show this system has good performance. © 2005 IEEE.