From Creative Ideas to Innovation Performance: The Role of Assessment Criteria

This article aims to make idea screening studies even more relevant to innovation management by coupling a set of assessment criteria so that they can be used for identifying early product ideas with innovation potential. We develop a framework, which integrates the complementary theoretical perspectives from the creativity and innovation literatures. The approach draws novelty and usefulness insights from the creativity literature and combines these with novelty and market potential insights from the innovation literature. The resulting framework encompasses novelty of a product idea and its usefulness to the intended recipients, but with a distinct focus on the value to the firm that can be created through market potential. This set of criteria makes it possible to couple creative ideas for new products directly to potential innovation performance. For the study, industry and market experts made assessments of 106 student‐generated projects; these assessments underline the distinctiveness of the three criteria and support the value of each criterion's independent role in assessing the innovation potential. Two student project cases particularly shed light on the relevance of each criterion and on its unique relationship within the framework.     

Extended Catalytic Scope of a Well‐Known Enzyme: Asymmetric Reduction of Iminium Substrates by Glucose Dehydrogenase

NADP(H)‐dependent imine reductases (IREDs) are of interest in biocatalytic research due to their ability to generate chiral amines from imine/iminium substrates. In reaction protocols involving IREDs, glucose dehydrogenase (GDH) is generally used to regenerate the expensive cofactor NADPH by oxidation of d ‐glucose to gluconolactone. We have characterized different IREDs with regard to reduction of a set of bicyclic iminium compounds and have utilized ¹H NMR and GC analyses to determine degree of substrate conversion and product enantiomeric excess (ee). All IREDs reduced the tested iminium compounds to the corresponding chiral amines. Blank experiments without IREDs also showed substrate conversion, however, thus suggesting an iminium reductase activity of GDH. This unexpected observation was confirmed by additional experiments with GDHs of different origin. The reduction of C=N bonds with good levels of conversion (>50 %) and excellent enantioselectivity (up to >99 % ee) by GDH represents a promiscuous catalytic activity of this enzyme.     

Brain–computer interfacing: more than the sum of its parts

The performance of non-invasive electroencephalogram-based (EEG) brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) has improved significantly in recent years. However, remaining challenges include the non-stationarity and the low signal-to-noise ratio of the EEG, which limit the bandwidth and hence the available applications. Optimization of both individual components of BCIs and the interrelationship between them is crucial to enhance bandwidth. In other words, neuroscientific knowledge and machine learning need to be optimized by considering concepts from human–computer interaction research and usability. In this paper, we present results of ongoing relevant research in our lab that addresses several important issues for BCIs based on the detection of transient changes in oscillatory EEG activity. First, we report on the long-term stability and robustness of detection of oscillatory EEG components modulated by distinct mental tasks, and show that the use of mental task pairs “mental subtraction versus motor imagery” achieves robust and reliable performance (Cohen’s κ > 0.6) in seven out of nine subjects over a period of 4 days. Second, we report on restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs) as promising tools for the recognition of oscillatory EEG patterns. In an off-line BCI simulation we computed average peak accuracies, averaged over ten subjects, of 80.8 ± 7.2 %. Third, we present the basic framework of the context-aware hybrid Graz-BCI that allows interacting with the massive multiplayer online role playing game World of Warcraft. We show how a more integrated design approach that considers all components of BCIs, their interrelationships, other input signals and contextual information can increase interaction efficacy.     

Contents of dietary fibre components and their relation to associated bioactive components in whole grain wheat samples from the HEALTHGRAIN diversity screen

A large and diverse material collection of whole grain wheat samples (n = 129) was analysed for total dietary fibre (TDF) content and composition, including fructan (11.5–15.5%). Correlations between the dietary fibre components, associated bioactive components (e.g. tocols, sterols, phenolic acids and folates) and agronomic properties previously determined on the same samples were found with multivariate analysis (PCA). Samples from the same countries had similar characteristics. The first PC described variation in components concentrated in the starchy endosperm (e.g. starch, β-glucan and fructan) and the dietary fibre components concentrated in the bran (e.g. TDF, arabinoxylan and cellulose). The second PC described the variation in kernel weight and other bran components such as alkylresorcinols, tocols and sterols. Interestingly, there was no correlation among these different groups of bran components, which reflected their concentration in different bran tissues. The results are of importance for plant breeders who wish to develop varieties with health-promoting effects.     

Stereoscopic video watermarking: a comparative study

Despite the sound theoretical, methodological, and experimental background inherited from 2D video, the stereoscopic video watermarking imposed itself as an open research topic. Paving the way towards practical deployment of such copyright protection mechanisms, the present paper is structured as a comparative study on the main classes of 2D watermarking methods (spread spectrum, side information, hybrid) and on their related optimal stereoscopic insertion domains (view or disparity based). The performances are evaluated in terms of transparency, robustness, and computational cost. First, the watermarked content transparency is assessed by both subjective protocols (according to ITU-R BT 500-12 and BT 1438 recommendations) and objective quality measures (five metrics based on differences between pixels and on correlation). Secondly, the robustness is objectively expressed by means of the watermark detection bit error rate against several classes of attacks, such as linear and nonlinear filtering, compression, and geometric transformations. Thirdly, the computational cost is estimated for each processing step involved in the watermarking chain. All the quantitative results are obtained out of processing two corpora of stereoscopic visual content: (1) the 3DLive corpus, summing up about 2 h of 3D TV content captured by French professionals, and (2) the MPEG 3D video reference corpus, composed of 17 min provided by both academic communities and industrials. It was thus established that for a fixed size of the mark, a hybrid watermark insertion performed into a new disparity map representation is the only solution jointly featuring imperceptibility (according to the subjective tests), robustness against the three classes of attacks, and nonprohibitive computational cost.     

Does Organizing for Creativity Really Lead to Innovation?

Stimulation of creativity has long been assumed to enhance innovation. Accordingly, organizing the work environment to unleash the creative potential of employees has been studied extensively. However, the present creativity literature has yet to produce sufficient empirical evidence to confirm this assumption, and therefore the generalizability of the relationship between organizational creativity and innovation remains indeterminate. This paper adopts the leading creativity and innovation models to identify the work environment characteristics stimulating creativity, and subsequently analyses whether this environment leads to product and process innovation in small and medium sized firms. The findings demonstrate that this environment does not yield the same results for product and process innovation, and particular factors of the work environment do not behave according to the expectations to enhance the likelihood of doing innovation. The study discusses these findings and advances the literature by showing that the relationship between organizational creativity and innovation is not generalizable, but is contingent upon the innovation type and, as the discussion will show, particular characteristics related to the firm. Accordingly, the paper suggests new research opportunities to further explore organizational creativity and innovation.     

Simultaneous removal of TOC and TSS in swine wastewater using the partial nitritation process

BACKGROUND: Considering biological nitrogen removal, the partial nitritation connected with the anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) process is a promising alternative for nitrogen elimination at high loading rates. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the establishment and operation of a partial nitritation process in an airlift reactor with simultaneous removal of total organic carbon and suspended solids using swine wastewater. RESULTS: The partial nitritation reactor was inoculated with a nitrifying sludge at 2.1 gTSS L^?1 and fed with an UASB reactor effluent. High organic carbon loading rates, above 2 kgTOC m^?3 d^?1 have been shown to be potential inhibitors of the partial nitritation process due to competition between autotrophic and heterotrophic bacteria. In this study, the partial nitritation process was established using undiluted swine wastewater, with HRT of 24 h, 1.84 mgO₂ L^?1 (SD = 0.41) DO, loading rate of 1.14 gTOC L^?1 d^?1 and 0.91 gN‐NH₃ L^?1 d^?1 for more than 100 consecutive days. At the same time, the system proved to be an effective tool in TOC and TSS removal, reaching 84.9% (SD = 9.3) and 83.1% (SD = 0.1), respectively. CONCLUSION: This result enhances partial nitritation application as a technology for high load nitrogen converting, and allows the possibility of connection with anammox reactors. Copyright © 2012 Society of Chemical Industry     

Heck Reactions of Aryl Chlorides Catalyzed by Ligand Free Palladium Salts

Palladium acetate has been shown to be a highly active catalyst for Heck reactions of aryl chlorides even in the absence of organic ligands. Bromobenzene can efficiently be coupled in presence of negligible traces of Pd, resulting in the highest TON (4.7 × 10⁷) and TOF (1.2 × 10⁷ h^?1) values that have ever been reported for this system up to now.     

Surface morphology of contact lenses probed with microscopy techniques.

The present study is bringing a comparison of surface morphology for various types of contact lenses. A novel method--scanning electron microscopy under aqueous conditions (cryo-SEM)--was tested for visualization of lenses at magnifications up to 2000x. For imaging lens surface on nanometre scale, we employed atomic force microscopy (AFM) in aqueous media. Various materials of lenses, based on silicone hydrogels or conventional hydrogels, were investigated. Total, 10 types of contact lenses from five manufacturers were selected and probed. We found that different methods of lens manufacture (lathe-cutting, cast-moulding, and spin casting) led to different values of surface roughness. In the swollen state, roughness values of lens surfaces lie between 4 and 140 nm. Lenses manufactured by lathe-cutting exhibit notable higher values, so that they could be easily distinguished from others. In cast-moulded lenses, the surface roughness decreased with increasing water content. Moreover, additional treatments of lenses introduced unique structural motifs onto surface. For instance, porous structure was found on lens surface finalized with plasma oxidation.