Intervention for organizational innovation: a case study

This article is intended to report an intervention in a SME of the IT sector, aiming at an organizational change process towards a greater proactivity of employees. The presentation of the case includes the diagnosis, intervention, and the beginning of the implementation of innovation projects, based on an adapted model of third generation large-group organizational change methods. In addition to the steps followed, small-world analysis techniques were used, with the intention of determining the existing communication networks; also, a content analysis of collected success stories was made, in order to suggest strong points for a future organizational culture. The results clarified the desirable characteristics of an intervention method with large groups, adapted to Portuguese companies, and effective in organizational innovation project design. The analysis of the success stories helped to determine the strengths of an orientation for the future, while the use of measures of small-world networks allowed us to analyze the existing informal organization. Although this study does not include the completion of the projects, due to difficulties in the company, it can provide a solid basis for application in future interventions.

Underwater acoustic networks: the FP7 UAN project

The EU-funded project UAN - Underwater Acoustic Network aims at conceiving, developing and testing at sea an innovative and operational concept for integrating in a unique communication system submerged, surface and aerial sensors with the objective of protecting off-shore and coastline critical infrastructures. A crucial aspect of the project consisted in the use of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) as mobile nodes in the underwater acoustic communication network. In particular, AUVs have the role of adapting the network geometry to the variation of the acoustic channel. This paper reports on the project concept and vision as well as on the progress of its various development phases. The recent at-sea successes that have been demonstrated within the UAN framework are detailed and results of the final UAN project demonstration, UAN11, held in the May of 2011, are reported. The UAN network was in operation for five continuous days with up to five nodes, of which three of them were mobile nodes. © IFAC.