The European challenge of KMN and innovation: a skills and competence portfolio for knowledge worker in SME's

Versão editor: http://www.isegi.unl.pt/docentes/acorreia/documentos/European_Challenge_KM_Innovation_2004.pdf

Web survey system to discover the actual role of experience in learning in higher education: a case study

March 19 - 22, 2006, São Paulo, BRAZIL World Congress on Computer Science, Engineering and Technology Education

Technology for creativity and innovation: tools, techniques and applications

It is widely accepted that organizations and individuals must be innovative and continually create new knowledge and ideas to deal with rapid change. Innovation plays an important role in not only the development of new business, process and products, but also in competitiveness and success of any organization. Technology for Creativity and Innovation: Tools, Techniques and Applications provides empirical research findings and best practices on creativity and innovation in business, organizational, and social environments. It is written for educators, academics and professionals who want to improve their understanding of creativity and innovation as well as the role technology has in shaping this discipline.

Factors influencing innovation decision making in Portuguese firms

There is an undeniable positive effect of innovation for both firms and the economy, with particular regards to the financial performance of firms. However, there is an important role of the decision making process for the allocation of resources to finance the innovation process. The aim of this paper is to understand what factors explain the decision making process in innovation activities of Portuguese firms. This is an empirical study, based on the modern theoretical approaches, which has relied on five key aspects for innovation: barriers, sources, cooperation, funding; and the decision making process. Primary data was collected through surveys to firms that have applied for innovation programmes within the Portuguese innovation agency. Univariate and multivariate statistical techniques were used. Our results suggest that the factors that mostly influence the Portuguese firms’ innovation decision-making processes are economical and financial (namely those related to profit increase and labour costs reduction).

Effects of team task structure on team climate for innovation and team outcomes

In this cross-sectional study we analyzed, whether team climate for innovation mediates the relationship between team task structure and innovative behavior, job satisfaction, affective organizational commitment, and work stress. 310 employees in 20 work teams of an automotive company participated in this study. 10 teams had been changed from a restrictive to a more self-regulating team model by providing task variety, autonomy, team-specific goals, and feedback in order to increase team effectiveness. Data support the supposed causal chain, although only with respect to team innovative behavior all required effects were statistically significant. Longitudinal designs and larger samples are needed to prove the assumed causal relationships, but results indicate that implementing self-regulating teams might be an effective strategy for improving innovative behavior and thus team and company effectiveness.

Services innovation and economic performance: An analysis at the firm

In this paper we estimate a model linking innovation effort and economic performance, along the lines of the Mairesse and Mohnen (2003) model. We examine this relationship in the context of services sectors instead of Research and Development intensive manufacturing sectors. Much effort has already been made to explore the innovation-performance relationship for manufacturing sectors but it is still much understudied for services, particularly for Portugal. In this paper we aim to take a step in fulfilling this gap. We use new firm level data for ten services sectors from the Second Community Innovation Survey of Portugal, to estimate the model.

Climate change impacts on portuguese energy system in 2050

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia do Ambiente, perfil Gestão e Sistemas Ambientais

Importance of global co-innovation networks: A TCS case study

Today all kinds of innovations and research work is done by partnerships of competent entities each having some specialized skills. Like the development of the global economy, global innovation partnerships have grown considerably and form the basis of most of the sophisticated innovations today. To further streamline and simplify such cooperation, several innovation networks have been formed, both at local and global levels. This paper discusses the different types of innovations and how cooperation can benefit innovation in terms of pooling of resources and sharing of risks. One example of an open global co-innovation network promoted by Tata Consultancy Services, the TCS COIN is taken as a case. It enables venture capitalists, consultants, research agencies, companies and universities form nodes of the network so that each entity can play a meaningful role in the innovation network. Further, two innovation projects implemented using the COIN are discussed. Innovation Networks like these could form the basis of a unique global innovation network, which is not owned by any company and is used by innovation partners globally to collaborate and conduct research and development.

Regional governance: strategies and disputes in health region management

OBJECTIVE To analyze the regional governance of the health systemin relation to management strategies and disputes.METHODOLOGICAL PROCEDURES A qualitative study with health managers from 19 municipalities in the health region of Bahia, Northeastern Brazil. Data were drawn from 17 semi-structured interviews of state, regional, and municipal health policymakers and managers; a focus group; observations of the regional interagency committee; and documents in 2012. The political-institutional and the organizational components were analyzed in the light of dialectical hermeneutics.RESULTS The regional interagency committee is the chief regional governance strategy/component and functions as a strategic tool for strengthening governance. It brings together a diversity of members responsible for decision making in the healthcare territories, who need to negotiate the allocation of funding and the distribution of facilities for common use in the region. The high turnover of health secretaries, their lack of autonomy from the local executive decisions, inadequate technical training to exercise their function, and the influence of party politics on decision making stand as obstacles to the regional interagency committee’s permeability to social demands. Funding is insufficient to enable the fulfillment of the officially integrated agreed-upon program or to boost public supply by the system, requiring that public managers procure services from the private market at values higher than the national health service price schedule (Brazilian Unified Health System Table). The study determined that “facilitators” under contract to health departments accelerated access to specialized (diagnostic, therapeutic and/or surgical) services in other municipalities by direct payment to physicians for procedure costs already covered by the Brazilian Unified Health System.CONCLUSIONS The characteristics identified a regionalized system with a conflictive pattern of governance and intermediate institutionalism. The regional interagency committee’s managerial routine needs to incorporate more democratic devices for connecting with educational institutions, devices that are more permeable to social demands relating to regional policy making.

Performance evaluation of hospitals that provide care in the public health system, Brazil

OBJECTIVE To analyze if size, administrative level, legal status, type of unit and educational activity influence the hospital network performance in providing services to the Brazilian Unified Health System.METHODS This cross-sectional study evaluated data from the Hospital Information System and the Cadastro Nacional de Estabelecimentos de Saúde (National Registry of Health Facilities), 2012, in Sao Paulo, Southeastern Brazil. We calculated performance indicators, such as: the ratio of hospital employees per bed; mean amount paid for admission; bed occupancy rate; average length of stay; bed turnover index and hospital mortality rate. Data were expressed as mean and standard deviation. The groups were compared using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Bonferroni correction.RESULTS The hospital occupancy rate in small hospitals was lower than in medium, big and special-sized hospitals. Higher hospital occupancy rate and bed turnover index were observed in hospitals that include education in their activities. The hospital mortality rate was lower in specialized hospitals compared to general ones, despite their higher proportion of highly complex admissions. We found no differences between hospitals in the direct and indirect administration for most of the indicators analyzed.CONCLUSIONS The study indicated the importance of the scale effect on efficiency, and larger hospitals had a higher performance. Hospitals that include education in their activities had a higher operating performance, albeit with associated importance of using human resources and highly complex structures. Specialized hospitals had a significantly lower rate of mortality than general hospitals, indicating the positive effect of the volume of procedures and technology used on clinical outcomes. The analysis related to the administrative level and legal status did not show any significant performance differences between the categories of public hospitals.

Cultural innovation and transmission of tool use in wild chimpanzees:evidence from field experiments

Animal Cognition, V.6, pp. 213-223

PBL in healthcare sciences: a case study on curriculum innovation

Students of a Cardiopulmonary Sciences curriculum in a Portuguese higher education institution have shown poor learning outcomes and low satisfaction on a course about lung function tests. A transmissive pedagogical approach, mainly based on lectures, was the common teaching practice. Aiming for a change, PBL was considered as a powerful alternative and also as a contribution for progressively innovating the curriculum. Purpose: to create PBL activities in a lung function tests course. to describe their implementation, to analyse the effects of PBL integration in students’ performance and attitudes, to characterize the generated learning environment.

Innovation through virtual communities of practice: motivations and constraints in the knowledge-creation process

This paper appears in International Journal of Projectics. Vol 4(1), pp. 39-49

The European challenge of KM and innovation: a skills and competence portfolio for the knowledge worker in SME's

This chapter appears in Innovations of Knowledge Management edited by Montano, D. Copyright 2004, IGI Global, www.igi-global.com. Posted by permission of the publisher.