Creativity, design and entrepreneurship : management education and development for innovation

Creativity, design and entrepreneurship, have been recognized as important contributors to a firm’s innovation and to the nation’s economic growth. Creativity and design play important roles in the fuzzy front end of a firm’s innovation process and also in corporate venturing processes, but the relationship between creativity, design and entrepreneurship to a large extent has not explicitly been examined. This exploratory conceptual paper briefly reviews the separate bodies of research on creativity, design and entrepreneurship, identifying similarities and differences in constructs and applications and identifying implications for business and for management education.

Developing an integrative model for understanding innovation adoption

We develop and test a theoretically-based integrative model of organizational innovation adoption. Confirmatory factor analyses using responses from 134 organizations showed that the hypothesized second-order model was a better fit to the data than the traditional model of independent factors. Furthermore, although not all elements were significant, the hypothesized model fit adoption better than the traditional model.

Collaboration using BIM : results of cooperative research centre for construction innovation projects

This paper discusses the issues with sharing information between different disciplines in collaborative projects. The focus is on the information itself rather than the wider issues of collaboration. A range of projects carried out by the Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation (CRC CI) in Australia is used to illustrate the issues.

Construction safety in the repair and maintenance sector

Statistics indicate that the percentage of fatal industrial accidents arising from repair, maintenance, minor alteration and addition (RMAA) works in Hong Kong was disturbingly high and was over 56% in 2006. This paper provides an initial report of a research project funded by the Research Grants Council (RGC) of the HKSAR to address this safety issue. The aim of this study is to scrutinize the causal relationship between safety climate and safety performance in the RMAA sector. It aims to evaluate the safety climate in the RMAA sector; examine its impacts on safety performance, and recommend measures to improve safety performance in the RMAA sector. This paper firstly reports on the statistics of construction accidents arising from RMAA works. Qualitative and quantitative research methods applied in conducting the research are dis-cussed. The study will critically review these related problems and provide recommendations for improving safety performance in the RMAA sector.

Dancing between diversity and consistency : refining assessment in postgraduate degrees in dance

This publication is the culmination of a 2 year Australian Learning and Teaching Council's Project Priority Programs Research Grant which investigates key issues and challenges in developing flexible guidelines lines for best practice in Australian Doctoral and Masters by Research Examination, encompassing the two modes of investigation, written and multi-modal (practice-led/based) theses, their distinctiveness and their potential interplay. The aims of the project were to address issues of assessment legitimacy raised by the entry of practice-orientated dance studies into Australian higher degrees; examine literal embodiment and presence, as opposed to cultural studies about states of embodiment; foreground the validity of questions around subjectivity and corporeal intelligence/s and the reliability of artistic/aesthetic communications, and finally to celebrate ‘performance mastery’(Melrose 2003) as a rigorous and legitimate mode of higher research. The project began with questions which centred around: the functions of higher degree dance research; concepts of 'master-ness’ and ‘doctorateness’; the kinds of languages, structures and processes which may guide candidates, supervisors, examiners and research personnel; the purpose of evaluation/examination; addressing positive and negative attributes of examination. Finally the study examined ways in which academic/professional, writing/dancing, tradition/creation and diversity/consistency relationships might be fostered to embrace change. Over two years, the authors undertook a qualitative national study encompassing a triangulation of semi-structured face to face interviews and industry forums to gather views from the profession, together with an analysis of existing guidelines, and recent literature in the field. The most significant primary data emerged from 74 qualitative interviews with supervisors, examiners, research deans and administrators, and candidates in dance and more broadly across the creative arts. Qualitative data gathered from the two primary sources, was coded and analysed using the NVivo software program. Further perspectives were drawn from international consultant and dance researcher Susan Melrose, as well as publications in the field, and initial feedback from a draft document circulated at the World Dance Alliance Global Summit in July 2008 in Brisbane. Refinement of data occurred in a continual sifting process until the final publication was produced. This process resulted in a set of guidelines in the form of a complex dynamic system for both product and process oriented outcomes of multi-modal theses, along with short position papers on issues which arose from the research such as contested definitions, embodiment and ephemerality, ‘liveness’ in performance research higher degrees, dissolving theory/practice binaries, the relationship between academe and industry, documenting practices and a re-consideration of the viva voce.

High-performance ceramic membranes with a separation layer of metal oxide nanofibers

In conventional fabrication of ceramic separation membranes, the particulate sols are applied onto porous supports. Major structural deficiencies under this approach are pin-holes and cracks, and the dramatic losses of flux when pore sizes are reduced to enhance selectivity. We have overcome these structural deficiencies by constructing hierarchically structured separation layer on a porous substrate using lager titanate nanofibers and smaller boehmite nanofibers. This yields a radical change in membrane texture. The resulting membranes effectively filter out species larger than 60 nm at flow rates orders of magnitude greater than conventional membranes. This reveals a new direction in membrane fabrication.

The interrelations among the project team’s conduit networks, knowledge network and its performance

From the perspective of network, a project team’s social capital consists of conduits network, and resource exchange network. Prior research intensively studies the effect of the structure of conduits network on the team’s performance, assuming knowledge transfer is the causal mechanism linking conduits network to performance. This paper attempts to explore the interrelations between conduits network and knowledge network, and further distinguish the different influence between various conduit networks, and hypothesizes that a project team’s knowledge network mediates the effect of various conduit networks on the team’s performance. This research can enrich our knowledge of disparate influence of the various conduit networks on knowledge transfer, and imply some management practices to enhance the organization’s social capital, and hence improve the organization’s performance.

The impact of internal and external market orientations on firm performance.

The role of internal marketing in developing organisational competencies is identified as a key area for continued research (Rafiq and Ahmed, 2003). One competence of particular interest to marketers is market orientation. This paper examines the impact of internal marketing, operationalised as a set of internal market orientated behaviours (IMO) on market orientation (MO), and consequently organisational performance, and provides the first quantitative evidence to support the long held assumption that internal marketing has an impact on marketing success. Data from UK retail managers were analysed using structural equations modelling employing LISREL software. These data indicate significant relationships between internal market orientation, employee motivation and external marketing success (market orientation, financial performance and customer satisfaction). Our results also support previous findings indicating a positive impact of external market orientation on customer satisfaction and financial performance. For marketing practitioners, the role of internal market orientation is developing marketing strategies is discussed.

Generative systems as relational bridges

Generative media systems present an opportunity for users to leverage computational systems to make sense of complex media forms through interactive and collaborative experiences. Generative music and art are a relatively new phenomenon that use procedural invention as a creative technique to produce music and visual media. These kinds of systems present a range of affordances that can facilitate new kinds of relationships with music and media performance and production. Early systems have demonstrated the potential to provide access to collaborative ensemble experiences to users with little formal musical or artistic expertise. This paper examines the relational affordances of these systems evidenced by selected field data drawn from the Network Jamming Project. These generative performance systems enable access to unique ensemble with very little musical knowledge or skill and they further offer the possibility of unique interactive relationships with artists and musical knowledge through collaborative performance. In this presentation I will focus on demonstrating how these simulated experiences might lead to understandings that may be of educational and social benefit. Conference participants will be invited to jam in real time using virtual interfaces and to view video artifacts that demonstrate an interactive relationship with artists.

A comparative study of manufacturing practices and performance variables

The reported study was conducted to compare and contrast current manufacturing practices between two countries, Australia and Malaysia, and identify the practices that significantly influence their manufacturing performances. The results are based on data collected from surveys using a standard questionnaire in both countries. Evidence indicates that product quality and reliability is the main competitive factor for manufacturers. Maintaining a supplier rating system and regularly updating it with field failure and warranty data and making use of product data management are found to be effective manufacturing practices. In terms of the investigated manufacturing performance, Australian manufacturers are marginally ahead of their Malaysian counterparts. However, Malaysian manufacturers came out ahead on most dimensions of advanced quality and manufacturing practices, particularly in the adoption of product data management, effective supply chains and relationships with suppliers and customers.

Measuring creative employment : implications for innovation policy

Both creative industries and innovation are slippery fish to handle conceptually, to say nothing of their relationship. This paper faces, first, the problems of definitions and data that can bedevil clear analysis of the creative industries. It then presents a method of data generation and analysis that has been developed to address these problems while providing an evidence pathway supporting the movement in policy thinking from creative output (through industry sectors) to creative input to the broader economy (through a focus on occupations/activity). Facing the test of policy relevance, this work has assisted in moving the ongoing debates about the creative industries toward innovation thinking by developing the concept of creative occupations as input value. Creative inputs as 'enablers' arguably has parallels with the way ICTs have been shown to be broad enablers of economic growth. We conclude with two short instantiations of the policy relevance of this concept: design as a creative input; and creative human capital and education.