Location, control and innovation in knowledge-intensive industries

The rising share of intangibles in economies worldwide highlights the crucial role of knowledge-intensive and creative industries in current and future wealth generation. The recognition of this trend has led to intense competition in these industries. At the micro-level, firms from both advanced and emerging economies are globally dispersing their value chains to control costs and leverage capabilities. The geography of innovation is the outcome of a dynamic process whereby firms from emerging economies strive to catch-up with advanced economy competitors, creating strong pressures for continued innovation. However, two distinct strategies can be discerned with regard to the control of the value chain. A vertical integration strategy emphasizes taking advantage of ‘linkage economies’ whereby controlling multiple value chain activities enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of each one of them. In contrast, a specialization strategy focuses on identifying and controlling the creative heart of the value chain, while outsourcing all other activities. The global mobile handset industry is used as the template to illustrate the theory.

Made in Italy. Made in Britain. Quality, brands and innovation in the European poultry market, 1950-1980.

This paper compares the development of the poultry industry in Italy with the UK. Earlier research has suggested that the UK poultry industry developed a symbiotic relationship with the emerging supermarket retailers. Italy had a retarded supermarket sector. Its distribution system favoured small-scale, independent butchers rather than chains of self-service supermarkets. Despite this the Italian poultry industry also modernised, adopting US technologies. The catalyst for this modernisation was technological innovation in refrigeration technologies that enabled Italian consumers and independent retailers to be persuaded of the merits of the new ‘technological’ chicken. While the Italian market has become dominated by AIA and Amadori in recent years, the key innovators were the entrepreneurs that created the company called Arena.

The look: style, technology and televisuality in the New Who

This chapter explores the distinctive qualities of the Matt Smith era Doctor Who, focusing on how dramatic emphases are connected with emphases on visual style, and how this depends on the programme's production methods and technologies. Doctor Who was first made in the 1960s era of live, studio-based, multi-camera television with monochrome pictures. However, as technical innovations like colour filming, stereo sound, CGI and post-production effects technology have been routinely introduced into the programme, and now High Definition (HD) cameras, they have given Doctor Who’s creators new ways of making visually distinctive narratives. Indeed, it has been argued that since the 1980s television drama has become increasingly like cinema in its production methods and aesthetic aims. Viewers’ ability to view the programme on high-specification TV sets, and to record and repeat episodes using digital media, also encourage attention to visual style in television as much as in cinema. The chapter evaluates how these new circumstances affect what Doctor Who has become and engages with arguments that visual style has been allowed to override characterisation and story in the current Doctor Who. The chapter refers to specific episodes, and frames the analysis with reference to earlier years in Doctor Who’s long history. For example, visual spectacle using green-screen and CGI can function as a set-piece (at the opening or ending of an episode) but can also work ‘invisibly’ to render a setting realistically. Shooting on location using HD cameras provides a rich and detailed image texture, but also highlights mistakes and especially problems of lighting. The reduction of Doctor Who’s budget has led to Steven Moffat’s episodes relying less on visual extravagance, connecting back both to Russell T. Davies’s concern to show off the BBC’s investment in the series but also to reference British traditions of gritty and intimate social drama. Pressures to capitalise on Doctor Who as a branded product are the final aspect of the chapter’s analysis, where the role of Moffat as ‘showrunner’ links him to an American (not British) style of television production where the preservation of format and brand values give him unusual power over the look of the series.

Persuasive technology and users acceptance of e-commerce: exploring perceived persuasiveness

This paper reviews theories and models of users’ acceptance and use in relation to “persuasive technology”, to justify the need to add consideration of ‘perceived persuasiveness’. We conclude by identifying variables associated with perceived persuasiveness, and highlight important future research directions in this domain.

Persuasive technology and users acceptance of e-commerce: users perceptions of website persuasiveness

Persuasive technologies have been extensively applied in the context of e-commerce for the purpose of marketing, enhancing system credibility, and motivating users to adopt the systems. Recognising that persuasion impacts on consumer behaviour to purchase online have not been investigated previously. This study reviews theories of technology acceptance, and identifies their limitation in not considering the effect of persuasive technologies when determining user online technology acceptance. The study proposes a theoretical model that considers the effect of persuasive technologies on consumer acceptance of e-commerce websites; with consideration of other related variables, i.e. trust and technological attributes. Moreover the paper proposes a model based on the UTAUT2, which contains relevant contributing factors; including the concept of perceived persuasiveness.

The spaces of the Wednesday Play (BBC TV 1964–1970): production, technology and style

The BBC television drama anthology The Wednesday Play, broadcast from 1964-70 on the BBC1 channel, was high-profile and often controversial in its time and has since been central to accounts of British television’s ‘golden age’. This article demonstrates that production technologies and methods were more diverse at that time than is now acknowledged, and that The Wednesday Play dramas drew both approving but also very critical responses from contemporary viewers and professional reviewers. This article analyses the ways that the physical spaces of production for different dramas in the series, and the different technologies of shooting and recording that were adopted in these production spaces, are associated with but do not determine aesthetic style. The adoption of single-camera location filming rather than the established production method of multi-camera studio videotaping in some of the dramas in the series has been important to The Wednesday Play’s significance, but each production method was used in different ways. The dramas drew their dramatic forms and aesthetic emphases from both theatre and cinema, as well as connecting with debates about the nature of drama for television. Institutional and regulatory frameworks such as control over staff working away from base, budgetary considerations and union agreements also impacted on decisions about how programmes were made. The article makes use of records from the BBC Written Archives Centre, as well as published scholarship. By placing The Wednesday Play in a range of overlapping historical contexts, its identity can be understood as transitional, differentiated and contested.

Digital technology and creative arts career patterns in the UK creative economy

The creative industries have attracted the attention of academics and policy makers for the complexity surrounding their development, supply-chains and models of production. In particular, many have recognised the difficulty in capturing the role that digital technologies play within the creative industries. Digital technologies are embedded in the production and market structures of the creative industries and are also partially distinct and discernible from it. This paper unfolds the role played by digital technologies focusing on a key aspect of its development: human capital. Using student micro-data collected by the Higher Education Statistical Agency (HESA) in the United Kingdom, we investigate the characteristics and location determinants of digital graduates. The paper deals specifically with understanding whether digital skills in the UK are equally embedded across the creative industries, or are concentrated in other sub-sectors. Furthermore, it explores the role that these graduates play in each sub-sector and their financial rewards. Findings suggest that digital technology graduates tend to concentrate in the software and gaming sub-sector of the creative industries but also are likely to be in embedded creative jobs outside of the creative industries. Although they are more likely to be in full-time employment than part-time or self-employment, they also suffer from a higher level of unemployment.

Follow the leaders? An analysis of convergence and innovation of faculty recruiting practices in US business schools

The debate associated with the qualifications of business school faculty has raged since the 1959 release of the Gordon–Howell and Pierson reports, which encouraged business schools in the USA to enhance their legitimacy by increasing their faculties’ doctoral qualifications and scholarly rigor. Today, the legitimacy of specific faculty qualifications remains one of the most discussed topics in management education, attracting the interest of administrators, faculty, and accreditation agencies. Based on new institutional theory and the institutional logics perspective, this paper examines convergence and innovation in business schools through an analysis of faculty hiring criteria. The qualifications examined are academic degree, scholarly publications, teaching experience, and professional experience. Three groups of schools are examined based on type of university, position within a media ranking system, and accreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Data are gathered using a content analysis of 441 faculty postings from business schools based in the USA over two time periods. Contrary to claims of global convergence, we find most qualifications still vary by group, even in the mature US market. Moreover, innovative hiring is more likely to be found in non-elite schools.

The co-development of technology and new buildings: incorporating building integrated photovoltaics

Current approaches for the reduction of carbon emissions in buildings are often predicated on the integration of renewable technologies into building projects. Building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) is one of these technologies and brings its own set of challenges and problems with a resulting mutual articulation of this technology and the building. A Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) approach explores how negotiations between informal groups of project actors with shared interests shape the ongoing specification of both BIPV and the building. Six main groups with different interests were found to be involved in the introduction of BIPV (Cost Watchers, Design Aesthetes, Green Guardians, Design Optimizers, Generation Maximizers and Users). Their involvement around three sets of issues (design changes from lack of familiarity with the technology, misunderstandings from unfamiliar interdependencies of trades and the effects of standard firm procedure) is followed. Findings underline how BIPV requires a level of integration that typically spans different work packages and how standard contractual structures inhibit the smooth incorporation of BIPV. Successful implementation is marked by ongoing (re-)design of both the building and the technology as informal fluid groups of project actors with shared interests address the succession of problems which arise in the process of implementation.