Ecodesign innovation: Is 'early' always 'best'?

This paper explores ecodesign within the product development process (PDP), particularly focusing on the design stages. Previous research has highlighted the early stages as the 'best' place to integrate environmental issues. Here the early stage hypothesis is explored from the perspective of the industrial design department - the early stage designers. Being located at the earliest possible design stages of product development would mean that, were the hypothesis to hold true, industrial design would be the 'best' place to locate ecodesign. Empirical research was conducted with the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) of a global Electrical and Electronic goods manufacture. It used a qualitative, inductive research methodology, based on two 'live' design concept projects, participant observation within the department, and on several semi-structured interviews. Throughout this paper, the empirical work is compared and contrasted to ecodesign literature, specifically to models of ecodesign innovation and the product development process. Beginning by exploring of the early stage hypothesis, the paper concludes with a conceptual model of early stage ecodesign for the context in question.

External corporate venture capital investment: Towards a framework for capturing and measuring strategic value

This paper presents the initial results of on-going research in the field of external Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) investments, i.e. equity investments of large corporations in entrepreneurial ventures which originated outside the corporation. The research is motivated by the fact that external CVC plays an increasingly important role within the strategy of corporations. Driven by a general trend towards a more open approach to innovation, companies see particular value in external corporate venturing as a tool to gain, for example, access to complementary technologies and a general window on technology developments. The review of literature in the field of external corporate venturing clearly reveals that theoretical gaps exist in understanding mechanisms for capturing value and measurements of this value. To help close these gaps, the research addresses the underlying question "How do corporations and start-ups capture and measure strategic value through external CVC investments" by using embedded, multiple case studies. Following an initial set of case studies, steps towards the development of a framework for capturing and measuring strategic value from CVC investments are outlined within this paper and the resulting preliminary framework is presented. The paper closes with an outlook on ongoing and future research steps. © 2009 PICMET.

IS/IT resources and business value: Operationalization of an information oriented framework

Several studies have highlighted the importance of information and information quality in organisations and thus information is regarded as key determinant for the success and organisational performance. In this paper, we review selected contributions and introduce a model that shows how IS/IT resources and capabilities could be interlinked with IS/IT utilization, organizational performance and business value. Complementing other models and frameworks, we explicitly consider information from a management maturity, quality and risk perspective and show how the new framework can be operationalized with existing assessment approaches by using empirical data from four industrial case studies. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

An information oriented framework for relating IS/IT resources and business value

Several studies have highlighted the importance of information and information quality in organisations and thus information is regarded as key determinant for the success and organisational performance. At the same time, there are numerous studies, frameworks and case studies examining the impact of information technology and systems to business value. Recently, several studies have proposed maturity models for information management capabilities in the literature, which claim that a higher maturity results in a higher organizational performance. Although these studies provide valuable information about the underlying relations, most are limited in specifying the relationship in more detail. Furthermore, most prominent approaches do not or at least not explicitly consider information as important influencing factor for organisational performance. In this paper, we aim to review selected contributions and introduce a model that shows how IS/IT resources and capabilties could be interlinked with IS/IT utilization, organizational performance and business value. Complementing other models and frameworks, we explicitly consider information from a management maturity, quality and risk perspective. Moreover, the paper discusses how each part of the model can be assessed in order to validate the model in future studies.

Climb-enabled discrete dislocation plasticity

A small strain two-dimensional discrete dislocation plasticity framework coupled to vacancy diffusion is developed wherein the motion of edge dislocations is by a combination of glide and climb. The dislocations are modelled as line defects in a linear elastic medium and the mechanical boundary value problem is solved by the superposition of the infinite medium elastic fields of the dislocations and a complimentary non-singular solution that enforces the boundary conditions. Similarly, the climbing dislocations are modelled as line sources/sinks of vacancies and the vacancy diffusion boundary value problem is also solved by a superposition of the fields of the line sources/sinks in an infinite medium and a complementary non-singular solution that enforces the boundary conditions. The vacancy concentration field along with the stress field provides the climb rate of the dislocations. Other short-range interactions of the dislocations are incorporated via a set of constitutive rules. We first employ this formulation to investigate the climb of a single edge dislocation in an infinite medium and illustrate the existence of diffusion-limited and sink-limited climb regimes. Next, results are presented for the pure bending and uniaxial tension of single crystals oriented for single slip. These calculations show that plasticity size effects are reduced when dislocation climb is permitted. Finally, we contrast predictions of this coupled framework with an ad hoc model in which dislocation climb is modelled by a drag-type relation based on a quasi steady-state solution. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.