Modelling diffusion of photovoltaic: concepts and applications

Innovation studies have been interest of not only the scholars from various fields such as economics, management and sociology but also industrial practitioners and policy makers. In this vast and fruitful field, the theory of diffusion of innovations, which has been driven by a sociological approach, has played a vital role in our understanding of the mechanisms behind industrial change. In this paper, our aim is to give a state of art review of diffusion of innovation models in a structural and conceptual way with special reference to photovoltaic. We argue firstly, as an underlying background, how diffusion of innovations theory differs from other innovation studies. Secondly we give a brief taxonomical review of modelling methodologies together with comparative discussions. And finally we put the wealth of modelling in the context of photovoltaic diffusion and suggest some future directions.

Inovação e indústria da moda: um modelo de inovação em estilos e tendências.

Este trabalho tem como intuito propor um modelo de inovação para a indústria da moda feminina. O modelo visa compreender o comportamento de estilos e tendências determinados e difundidos pelas empresas. A construção deste modelo é justificada pela contribuição que um estudo sobre inovação pode proporcionar à indústria da moda, a qual enfrenta baixos padrões de competitividade no mercado externo e interno. Além disso, embora existam muitos artigos sobre o assunto, poucos foram os modelos de inovação para a indústria da moda encontrados por esta pesquisa. Uma avaliação destes modelos indicou que existe espaço para a proposta de um modelo que aborde o comportamento de estilos e tendências ao longo do tempo. A estrutura de composição do modelo é sustentada por três pilares conceituais: teoria econômica neoschumpeteriana, modelos de inovação e modelos de inovação para a indústria da moda. A característica central do modelo é avaliar se existem estilos que permanecem em moda de maneira contínua ou descontínua. Como existe similaridade conceitual entre os estilos, no que se refere à identidade de gênero (androginia e feminilidade), foi efetuada uma aglutinação de alguns estilos dentro desta denominação. Nem todos os estilos se encaixaram nesta classificação. Então, estes estilos foram denominados como neutros. Como a pesquisa tem abordagem fenomenológica, qualitativa e longitudinal, foi adotada a metodologia hipotética dedutiva para a construção do modelo. Para verificação da validade das hipóteses foi usada uma análise exploratória dos dados por meio de estatística descritiva e decomposição da estrutura de variabilidade através de uma análise de componentes principais (PCA). Ambas as análises forneceram evidências a respeito das hipóteses em questão, as quais também foram testadas através de um teste binomial e de uma análise de variância multivariada por meio de permutações. Os resultados comprovaram que existem estilos que permanecem em moda de maneira contínua e que existem períodos de polarização das aglutinações de estilo.

Las maquetas como material didáctico para la enseñanza y aprendizaje de la lectura e interpretación de planos en la ingeniería

Utilizamos las maquetas como herramientas auxiliares para proyectar y mostrar proyectos de ingeniería, pero también pueden ser un excelente material didáctico para la enseñanza y aprendizaje de la lectura, interpretación y realización de los planos que definen un proyecto o sus diferentes elementos. En este trabajo se refiere la experiencia realizada por los autores con los alumnos de Ingeniería Técnica de Obras Públicas dentro de la unidad de Interpretación de Planos de la asignatura de Sistemas de Representación. La dificultad que los alumnos de la materia tienen para interpretar el lenguaje, códigos y convenciones de la expresión gráfica está entre los motivos por los que se ha utilizado las maquetas como método de representación tridimensional que permite hacer comprensibles y fácilmente interpretadas las características constructivas de los diferentes elementos y las operaciones necesarias para pasar de la representación a la realización de la unidad de obra. En la comunicación se describe la actividad realizada con los alumnos, la selección de las unidades a representar, la elaboración de las maquetas y planos, poniendo especial acento en la concordancia entre la representación gráfica y el modelo tridimensional. Asimismo se han analizado las capacidades didácticas de uno de los trabajos realizados por los alumnos así como la evaluación y conclusiones de la experiencia realizada.

A review of models of spatial innovation infrastructures in support of high growth SMEs

This Paper first provides a review and analysis of the recent trends on innovation infrastructures developed in industrialised countries to promote innovation and competitiveness for high growth SMEs. It specifically aims to examine various spatial models developed to support provision of innovation infrastructure for high growth sector.

Design Led Innovation : exploring the synthesis of needs, technologies and business models

The term Design is used to describe a wide range of activities. Like the term innovation, it is often used to describe both an activity and an outcome. Many products and services are often described as being designed, as they describe a conscious process of linking form and function. Alternatively, the many and varied processes of design are often used to describe a cost centre of an organisation to demonstrate a particular competency. However design is often not used to describe the ‘value’ it provides to an organisation and more importantly the ‘value’ it provides to both existing and future customers. Design Led Innovation bridges this gap. Design Led Innovation is a process of creating a sustainable competitive advantage, by radically changing the customer value proposition. A conceptual model has been developed to assist organisations apply and embed design in a company’s vision, strategy, culture, leadership and development processes.

What is the role of design-led innovation and design-led prototyping in developing novel business models?

Recently, ‘business model’ and ‘business model innovation’ have gained substantial attention in management literature and practice. However, many firms lack the capability to develop a novel business model to capture the value from new technologies. Existing literature on business model innovation highlights the central role of ‘customer value’. Further, it suggests that firms need to experiment with different business models and engage in ‘trail-and-error’ learning when participating in business model innovation. Trial-and error processes and prototyping with tangible artifacts are a fundamental characteristic of design. This conceptual paper explores the role of design-led innovation in facilitating firms to conceive and prototype novel and meaningful business models. It provides a brief review of the conceptual discussion on business model innovation and highlights the opportunities for linking it with the research stream of design-led innovation. We propose design-led business model innovation as a future research area and highlight the role of design-led prototyping and new types of artifacts and prototypes play within it. We present six propositions in order to outline future research avenues.

Service innovation and business models

Western economies are highly dependent on service innovation for their growth and employment. An important driver for economic growth is, therefore, the development of new, innovative services like electronic services, mobile end-user services, new financial or personalized services. Service innovation joins four trends that currently shape the western economies: the growing importance of services, the need for innovation, changes in consumer and business markets, and the advancements in information and communication technology (ICT).

New business models for antibiotic innovation.

The increase in antibiotic resistance and the dearth of novel antibiotics have become a growing concern among policy-makers. A combination of financial, scientific, and regulatory challenges poses barriers to antibiotic innovation. However, each of these three challenges provides an opportunity to develop pathways for new business models to bring novel antibiotics to market. Pull-incentives that pay for the outputs of research and development (R&D) and push-incentives that pay for the inputs of R&D can be used to increase innovation for antibiotics. Financial incentives might be structured to promote delinkage of a company's return on investment from revenues of antibiotics. This delinkage strategy might not only increase innovation, but also reinforce rational use of antibiotics. Regulatory approval, however, should not and need not compromise safety and efficacy standards to bring antibiotics with novel mechanisms of action to market. Instead regulatory agencies could encourage development of companion diagnostics, test antibiotic combinations in parallel, and pool and make transparent clinical trial data to lower R&D costs. A tax on non-human use of antibiotics might also create a disincentive for non-therapeutic use of these drugs. Finally, the new business model for antibiotic innovation should apply the 3Rs strategy for encouraging collaborative approaches to R&D in innovating novel antibiotics: sharing resources, risks, and rewards.

Intellectual property, creativity and innovation : IP models and the political economy of developing Asia

In advanced capitalist societies, intellectual property laws protecting such subject matter as copyright and patents are justified by a combination of theories, which include the provision of economic incentives to foster creativity and innovation and the prevention of unfair competition. IP academics and policy makers have differing views about the appropriate balance between these objectives and public interest considerations such as health, education and the protection of the environment. These different views entered the policy debate in Asian developing countries in connection with an unprecedented introduction and expansion of IP laws over the last 25 years. This paper will use case studies of law reform from Asia, in particular Southeast Asia, to show that the policy considerations of governments in reforming their laws were often quite different from the standard rationale mentioned above. As much of the IP was, at least initially, held by foreigners and introduced to attract foreign investment, national development considerations were joined with the more commonly quoted objectives to promote the rights, creativity and innovation of individuals. Such national development objectives at times coincided and at other times collided with official explanations and received wisdom about the effects of stronger IP rights.

Especially in the early postcolonial period, copyright laws and other IP laws were frequently restricted or simply not implemented, if they conflicted with development policies in areas such as education or public health. Such policies were slowly changing in the wake of WTO-TRIPS and other international agreements. Nevertheless, the implementation and enforcement of the IP laws has been uneven. Specialised institutions such as courts and IP administering agencies compete with other branches of government and administration for limited funding and a rich repertoire of informal dispute settlement procedures has kept the number of court cases relatively low. In some countries, censorship laws have influenced freedom of expression and led to quite idiosyncratic interpretations of intellectual property laws. Governments often also retain a role in the assessment of licensing and technology transfer contracts. And while there are many programs to foster individual creativity, in most cases R & D activities are still largely taking place in government institutions and this has influenced the thinking about intellectual property rights and creativity in the context of employment.

The paper uses a few case studies to examine the implementation of IP laws in selected Asian developing countries to point to the quite different institutional setting for IP law reform in comparison to European or American models. It reaches some tentative conclusions as to the likely effects on creativity and innovation under these different circumstances.

Nature and relevance of inherited blueprints on business models choices and innovation: an assessment

One important metaphor, referred to biological theories, used to investigate on organizational and business strategy issues is the metaphor about heredity; an area requiring further investigation is the extent to which the characteristics of blueprints inherited from the parent, helps in explaining subsequent development of the spawned ventures. In order to shed a light on the tension between inherited patterns and the new trajectory that may characterize spawned ventures’ development we propose a model aimed at investigating which blueprints elements might exert an effect on business model design choices and to which extent their persistence (or abandonment) determines subsequent business model innovation. Under the assumption that academic and corporate institutions transmit different genes to their spin-offs, we hence expect to have heterogeneity in elements that affect business model design choices and its subsequent evolution. This is the reason why we carry on a twofold analysis in the biotech (meta)industry: under a multiple-case research design, business model and especially its fundamental design elements and themes scholars individuated to decompose the construct, have been thoroughly analysed. Our purpose is to isolate the dimensions of business model that may have been the object of legacy and the ones along which an experimentation and learning process is more likely to happen, bearing in mind that differences between academic and corporate might not be that evident as expected, especially considering that business model innovation may occur.