journal article
LitStream Collection
Home
Johnson, Jonathan; Moultrie, James
2012 International Journal of Innovation Science
Innovation is a critical factor in ensuring commercial success within the area of medical technology. Biotechnology and Healthcare developments require huge financial and resource investment, in-depth research and clinical trials. Consequently, these developments involve a complex multidisciplinary structure, which is inherently full of risks and uncertainty. In this context, early technology assessment and ‘proof of concept’ is often sporadic and unstructured. Existing methodologies for managing the feasibility stage of medical device development are predominantly suited to the later phases of development and favour detail in optimisation, validation and regulatory approval. During these early phases, feasibility studies are normally conducted to establish whether technology is potentially viable. However, it is not clear how this technology viability is currently measured. This paper aims to redress this gap through the development of a technology confidence scale, as appropriate explicitly to the feasibility phase of medical device design. These guidelines were developed from analysis of three recent innovation studies within the medical device industry.
2012 International Journal of Innovation Science
In a large idea management system it is very useful to have a general purpose "ideas like this" capability. Such a tool can be used to define a distance between two ideas, and with a distance metric it is possible to explore the dimensionality and size of a space. Using feature-based Jaccard-Tanimoto similarity, we find that "idea space" is consistently about 14-dimensional regardless of the origin or specifics of the ideas, which has some practical consequences for the behavior and display of similarity search results. In addition, given a distance within which people judge ideas to be "practically identical", the size of the universe of ideas can (whimsically) be estimated at 6 billion ideas.
Wyman, Gail; Holland, Valerie; Yates, Simeon
2012 International Journal of Innovation Science
This paper describes the use of sociodrama action methods within a design thinking workshop created to support marketing planning for a new product innovation. Participants were a digital sector SME and researchers within a UK university knowledge transfer programme. The paper (1) discusses the theoretical foundations of design thinking and sociodrama; (2) presents a detailed case study of workshop co-development and delivery; and (3) reports the impacts for the client and the university. The authors assert that the discourse of design thinking enhances innovative, collaborative problem solving that improve exploration of possibilities for new product and service development as well as improved organizational business processes. Sociodrama methods assist facilitators by incorporating psychological, linguistic and biological elements to design thinking, leading to superior outcomes than simply from setting up a creative problem solving activity.
Kahn, Kenneth; Dempsey, Jaycee
2012 International Journal of Innovation Science
The center for innovation model is a growing and prominent phenomenon across corporate, government, nonprofit, and university contexts. Based on the name, one would infer an aim is to serve as a mechanism that catalyzes innovation. A further aim would be to serve as exemplars of technology development, knowledge development, and knowledge dissemination in the course of delivering a given mission. To date, little work has examined the center for innovation phenomenon and so there is a need to investigate these inferences and provide an understanding for the basis and rationale for why organizations across various contexts are pursuing centers for innovation. Examining mission statements followed by an electronic survey of 66 centers for innovation, we characterize the practices, rationales, success factors, challenges, and other descriptors of these centers in an effort to understand their operating characteristics. Results suggest four archetypes for the center for innovation model based on constituency. Results also show similarities across success factors and challenges, with sustainable funding clearly a common challenge.
2012 International Journal of Innovation Science
doi: 10.1260/1757-2223.4.2.101
Entrepreneurs develop new technology ventures in uncertain conditions with unproven technologies and limited resources. The majority of such ventures fail. Examining entrepreneurs' attitudes to failure may reveal much about how entrepreneurs learn and how they identify subsequent opportunities.There is much literature on entrepreneurial failure [1-7] but relatively little that is focused on attitudes to failure [8, 9], the high-technology industry, or international comparisons. Pioneering work by the late Jason Cope applied methodologies derived from qualitative psychology to investigate attitudes to failure in entrepreneurs with recent experience of failed ventures in the aftermath of the ‘dot-com’ crash in 2001. We develop this work further, examining a wider range of geographic regions, a less intense period and focusing entirely on attitudes of the entrepreneur.This paper examines how entrepreneurs' attitudes to failure in early stage technology companies differ in the USA (Silicon Valley), UK (Cambridge) and Germany (Munich), and what this might reveal about entrepreneurial learning and opportunity identification in these countries. Using a qualitative approach, interviews with habitual entrepreneurs explore their experiences of failure. Techniques from qualitative psychology, including Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis are employed in the gathering and analysis of interview-based case studies to reveal emergent trends, which are then used to compare attitudes to failure within and between each country.Based on preliminary analysis of interview transcripts and a review of the literature, a conceptual model of how to analyze failure is proposed. Emergent trends are identified within each country and then evaluated to draw comparisons between different countries. Failure represents a frequent and important component of the entrepreneurial experience. Attitudes to failure reveal insights into how entrepreneurs respond and how they identify future opportunities.It is hoped this research will add to existing knowledge and theory of entrepreneurial failure, especially through the comparative (regional) approach and the industry-specific (high-technology) focus. It may also improve the preparedness of new entrepreneurs, with positive implications for future entrepreneurial success.
Showing 1 to 8 of 8 Articles