Innovation Speed in Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises

In this era of fast‐paced technological change companies are frequently forced to quickly bring innovative products to a competitive marketplace. Small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in innovative contribution and growth of the global economy, yet face unique challenges with regard to new product development. To date scholars disagree on the effect of firm size on the antecedents and outcomes for innovation speed. We review the relevant literature, develop a conceptual model of innovation speed for SMEs and test it with 158 projects across several technology‐related industries. Results revealed that SMEs had different speed antecedents from large firms, had their antecedents vary by radicalness and found speed to be synergistic with efficiency, quality and project success. Implications for managers and scholars are discussed.     

Exploring Crisis Management in UK Small‐ and Medium‐Sized Enterprises

Despite a long‐established crisis management literature that focuses on large enterprises, crisis management planning in the context of small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) is less extensively researched. Using data collected from 215 SMEs in the United Kingdom, this paper explores the perceptions and experiences of SMEs' managing directors in relation to crisis management planning. Furthermore, the paper examines differences in perceptions between planning and non‐planning SMEs. Analysis reveals six factors that correspond to resilience through planning, financial impact, operational crisis management, the perfect storm, the aftermath of survival and atrophy. Results indicate how the experience of crisis and the type of crisis of type encountered affect managers' assessment of whether planning can be used to address crisis prevention and lower impact.     

Speed of Venture Financing for Emerging Technology‐Based Entrepreneurial Firms as a Function of Founder Reputation

One of the major commercialization hurdles for technology‐based entrepreneurial enterprises is financing and the speed of its acquisition. This is compounded in the case of emerging technology‐based enterprises by the nature of their technology acquisition and founding team structure. Many of these firms do not have founders with extensive reputations in the financial community. If founder reputation is important to funding sources with regard to speed and access, and emerging technology commercial development is important for solving twenty‐first‐century problems and generating economic growth, then there is cause for concern. Here we build on prior research and data from 140 Internet‐based firms to examine the effect that founder reputation has on the ability of an enterprise to swiftly obtain financing. Our results suggest that founder reputation expedites ventures' quick access to public but not to private financing. In addition, our results demonstrate that venture capital financing obtained early on and financing by large venture capital syndicates delay access to public financing for founders with extensive reputations.     

UK Film Companies: Project‐Based Organizations Lacking Entrepreneurship and Innovativeness?

The growth of project‐based forms of organization has been interpreted as a response to rapidly changing technological and market environments. Companies operating in this way are assumed to be inherently innovative, continually breaking up and reconfiguring teams of workers whose highly developed skills enable them to multi‐task and apply their knowledge in novel situations, in which new technology is swiftly assimilated and deployed. Project workers, who may engage in repeat contracting with different employers, belong to technical communities wherein knowledge is developed and resides. The transformation from vertical integration to project‐based working in the film industry would thus appear to privilege innovation. However, in the UK film industry at least, this study suggests that, in spite of freelance working, crew and technicians follow highly specialized, hierarchical careers, and that the organization of production is virtually the same as it was at the height of the Hollywood ‘Studio System’. Furthermore, it will be argued that the informal, reputational networks that operate in the UK industry may act as a barrier to development rather than as an engine of change.     

Ideas and Implementation: The Effective Implementation of Novel Marketing Programmes in Small‐ to Medium‐Sized Greek Firms

The purpose of the present study is to identify the potential contribution that a firm's climate supporting creativity can make towards understanding the effective implementation of novel marketing programmes. Specifically, a conceptual model is developed and empirically tested with Bayesian path analysis, using data obtained from managers of 87 Greek firms. Results suggest that a firm's climate that supports creativity has an indirect effect on marketing programme implementation effectiveness through marketing programme novelty. Additionally, climate for creativity moderates the relationship between marketing programme novelty and marketing programme implementation effectiveness such that the indirect effect of climate for creativity on marketing programme implementation effectiveness was found significant for levels of climate moderate to low, but not when the level of climate for creativity was high. Recommendations for further research are discussed.     

Analysis of the Competitive Intelligence Activities of Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises from the Industrial Sector

The aim of this research is to analyze competitive intelligence (CI) activities in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) from the industrial sector in Spain. Specifically, an attempt is made to identify why these companies carry out CI activities, the types of activity they carry out, and the influence that a company's features and the environment in which it operates have on developing CI activities. An ad hoc questionnaire was put together comprising 124 items distributed among a sample of 425 SMEs from the industrial sector. The results show that a company's features and environment have a significant influence on the CI activities developed by them.     

Functional Management Competence and Growth of Young Technology‐Based Firms

Acknowledging an increased research interest into the success factors for young technology‐based firms in the last decade, the present study serves two main purposes. First, we aim at developing a comprehensive concept of functional management competence in young technology‐based firms. Functional management competence covers the understanding of and proficiency in managing specific functional tasks ( Katz, 1974 ). As we focus on young technology‐based firms, it is suggested that marketing, financial and technology management tasks are at the core of functional management competence. Second, we aim at delineating and validating an appropriate measurement model for functional management competence. In order to test the model's nomological validity, we investigate the impact of functional management competence on firm growth. Therefore, building on established firm development approaches, we propose a phase model for the development of young technology‐based firms. Our study builds upon data from 212 young technology‐based firms in the field of microtechnology, nanotechnology, electronics, optics and lasers. We use formative measurement models to establish valid and reliable constructs and a path model based on partial least squares modelling to investigate the performance effects. The results suggest that functional management competences generally are significant drivers of firm development speed. In particular, technology and marketing management competences are shown to impact development speed. While technology management competence is positively driving development speed, the marketing management competence impact on speed is mediated by competitive advantage of the new products developed by young technology‐based firms. Financial management competence has no significant link to firm development speed.     

Crisis Management and Strategic Orientation in Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Peru,Mexico and the United States

This study addresses the link between management concern for organizational crises and competitive strategy in small and medium‐sized enterprises in Peru, Mexico and the United States. Surveys were completed by 270 Peruvian, 218 Mexican and 256 American managers. Strategic orientation in Peru did not mirror the broad pattern found in Mexico and in the United States. Levels of concern for crises were significantly higher in both Mexico and Peru than in the United States for 12 of 21 crises. The level of concern for crises tended to increase with management level more in Mexico and Peru than in the United States. Correlations between competitive strategy and crisis concern were significant in 26 of 126 instances.     

Managing the Innovation of a Corporate IT‐based Cable Design System

Managing new Information Technology innovations requires an understanding of factors that influence organisational choice. When large firms invest in new IT applications such as Computer Aided Design, there is reason to doubt that they adequately understand user needs. Empirical investigation in a UK cables producing Multinational Company highlights the practical challenges faced by such designers, when designing bespoke systems technologies. In addition to understanding end market requirements, it is imperative to understand existing organisational practices and constraints. Evidence from this in‐depth innovation study points to the need to develop integrative theoretical accounts, which include insights from the innovation adoption process as well as the innovation design process.     

How Barriers to Collaboration Prevent Progress in Demand for Knowledge: A Dyadic Study of Small and Medium‐Sized Firms,Research and Technology Organizations and Universities

This article analyses the challenging collaboration between small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and knowledge institutions. The aim of the article is to shed light on the barriers, which hinder collaboration, and to investigate the particular role of research and technology organizations (RTOs) as potential mediators of collaboration between SMEs and universities. On the basis of a unique sample consisting of 151 SMEs, RTOs and universities from seven countries, the differences across dyads of potential collaborations are identified. In particular, the article finds that both firms and universities with collaboration experience with the other partner in general perceive higher barriers than inexperienced firms or universities. In terms of the mediating role of RTOs, the article illustrates that universities perceive lower barriers when collaborating with RTOs than with SMEs. A similar tendency to a mediating role of RTOs can be found among the SMEs' perception of university collaboration. Finally, the analysis shows that the knowledge institutions perceive the SMEs as very important collaboration partners, but the same sense of importance is not shared by the SMEs regarding collaboration with the knowledge institutions. Hence, there seems to be a quite unbalanced view on the potential of the collaborative ties, which is further discussed in the conclusion.     

Mindful Deviation through Combining Causation and Effectuation: A Design Theory‐Based Study of Technology Entrepreneurship

Technology entrepreneurship can be seen as building upon, while also deviating from, technological paths. Such deviation has primarily been described as singular events where individuals with prior knowledge discover a new opportunity. In this article, we will instead study deviation as a process of collective decision making, seen more as something mindful than singular. The purpose is to explore mindful deviation as decision making by nascent technology entrepreneurs as they conceptualize an early platform technology. Based on case assignments undertaken by 13 teams in a venture creation programme, C‐K design theory is used to trace how nascent technology entrepreneurs in action combine causal and effectual decision‐making logics. Individually answered questionnaires also offered insights into how the entrepreneurs perceived their decision making in hindsight. The findings break with our received wisdom around how opportunities are recognized as well as how effectual and causal logics occur. As a result, mindful deviation through combinations of effectual and causal logic is suggested as a means to understand early‐stage technology entrepreneurship.     

The Development of Science‐Based Products: Managing by Design Spaces

The design of science‐based products (SBP) combines three main issues: exploring a functional space, producing scientific knowledge about key phenomena related to the concept and ensuring manageability of the project. Literature on the subject generally considers the three issues to be irreconcilable, on the grounds that a project involving functional exploration and phenomenological exploration is unmanageable. However, based on two SBP cases, we show that this apparent unmanageability is mainly a result of the lack of a relevant managerial model for the interpretation of the observations. We introduce the notion of ‘design space’ as a collective working place where designers can act to learn about what they want to learn (for their overall design process). We show that the design of an SBP is managed as a sequence of design spaces.     

Towards a goal‐driven approach to action selection in self‐adaptive software

Self‐adaptive software is a closed‐loop system, since it continuously monitors its context (i.e. environment) and/or self (i.e. software entities) in order to adapt itself properly to changes. We believe that representing adaptation goals explicitly and tracing them at run‐time are helpful in decision making for adaptation. While goal‐driven models are used in requirements engineering, they have not been utilized systematically yet for run‐time adaptation. To address this research gap, this article focuses on the deciding process in self‐adaptive software, and proposes the Goal‐Action‐Attribute Model (GAAM). An action selection mechanism, based on cooperative decision making, is also proposed that uses GAAM to select the appropriate adaptation action(s). The emphasis is on building a light‐weight and scalable run‐time model which needs less design and tuning effort comparing with a typical rule‐based approach. The GAAM and action selection mechanism are evaluated using a set of experiments on a simulated multi‐tier enterprise application, and two sample ordinal and cardinal action preference lists. The evaluation is accomplished based on a systematic design of experiment and a detailed statistical analysis in order to investigate several research questions. The findings are promising, considering the obtained results, and other impacts of the approach on engineering self‐adaptive software. Although, one case study is not enough to generalize the findings, and the proposed mechanism does not always outperform a typical rule‐based approach, less effort, scalability, and flexibility of GAAM are remarkable. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Towards a data‐driven IoT software architecture for smart city utilities

The Internet of things (IoT) is emerging as the next big wave of digital presence for billions of devices on the Internet. Smart cities are a practical manifestation of IoT, with the goal of efficient, reliable, and safe delivery of city utilities like water, power, and transport to residents, through their intelligent management. A data‐driven IoT software platform is essential for realizing manageable and sustainable smart utilities and for novel applications to be developed upon them. Here, we propose such service‐oriented software architecture to address 2 key operational activities in a smart utility: the IoT fabric for resource management and the data and application platform for decision‐making. Our design uses Open Web standards and evolving network protocols, cloud and edge resources, and streaming big data platforms. We motivate our design requirements using the smart water management domain; some of these requirements are unique to developing nations. We also validate the architecture within a campus‐scale IoT testbed at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and present our experiences. Our architecture is scalable to a township or city while also generalizable to other smart utility domains. Our experiences serve as a template for other similar efforts, particularly in emerging markets and highlight the gaps and opportunities for a data‐driven IoT software architecture for smart cities.     

Towards a System‐Oriented Framework for Analysing and Evaluating Emergency Response

Information can be provided by studying and evaluating past emergencies and the response in connection to them. This information would then be useful in efforts directed at preventing, mitigating and/or preparing for future emergencies. However, the analysis and evaluation of emergency response operations is not an easy task, especially when the operation involves several cooperating actors (e.g. the fire and rescue services, the police, the emergency medical services, etc.). Here, we identify and discuss four aspects of this challenge: (1) issues related to the values governing the evaluation, (2) issues related to the complexity of the systems involved, (3) issues related to the validity of the information on which the analysis and evaluation is based and (4) issues related to the limiting conditions under which the emergency response system operated. An outline of a framework for such an analysis and evaluation, influenced by systems theory, accident investigation theories and programme evaluation theories dealing with the above aspects, is introduced, discussed and exemplified using empirical results from a case study. We conclude that the proposed framework may provide a better understanding of how an emergency response system functioned during a specific operation, and help to identify the potential events and/or circumstances that could significantly affect the performance of the emergency response system, either negatively or positively. The insights gained from using the framework may allow the actors involved in the response operation to gain a better understanding of how the emergency response system functioned as a whole, as well as how the actors performed as individual components of the system. Furthermore, the information can also be useful for actors preparing for future emergencies.     

Towards a smooth design process for static communicative node‐link diagrams

Node‐link infographics are visually very rich and can communicate messages effectively, but can be very difficult to create, often involving a painstaking and artisanal process. In this paper we present an investigation of node‐link visualizations for communication and how to better support their creation. We begin by breaking down these images into their basic elements and analyzing how they are created. We then present a set of techniques aimed at improving the creation workflow by bringing more flexibility and power to users, letting them manipulate all aspects of a node‐link diagram (layout, visual attributes, etc.) while taking into account the context in which it will appear. These techniques were implemented in a proof‐of‐concept prototype called GraphCoiffure, which was designed as an intermediary step between graph drawing/editing software and image authoring applications. We describe how GraphCoiffure improves the workflow and illustrate its benefits through practical examples.     

Design of Robust Discrete‐Time Observer‐Based Repetitive‐Control System

This paper concerns the design of a robust discrete‐time observer‐based repetitive‐control system for a class of linear plants with periodic uncertainties. A discrete two‐dimensional model is built that partially uncouples the control and learning actions of a repetitive‐control system, enabling their preferential adjustment. The combination of a singular‐value decomposition of the output matrix and Lyapunov stability theory is used to derive a linear‐matrix‐inequality‐based design algorithm that determines the control and state‐observer gains. A numerical example illustrates the main advantage of the method: easy, preferential adjustment of control and learning by means of two tuning parameters in an linear‐matrix‐inequality‐based condition.     

基于J2EE和业务定制功能的企业信息系统开发平台

集团数字化管理平台(Quick平台)及其Quick系列软件是在追求软件产品与企业管理模式相互适应的目标下研制而成的．根据平台的功能和结构,剖析了Quick平台适合快速开发和构建企业信息系统(enterprise information system, EIS)的特点,并给出了实施中需重点解决的关键技术．阐述了Quick平台和EIS的互操作过程,介绍了基于Quick平台构建EIS的步骤,最后展示了基于Quick平台构建的EIS．Quick平台能够实现EIS软件定制开发与软件产品相结合的系统开发实施模式．     

带仿真功能的51系列单片机开发板设计

51系列单片机开发板在实验与教学环境中被广泛使用.主要介绍基于SST89E554RC单片机,设计一种带仿真功能的51单片机开发板,简易实用,成本低廉,很适合单片机爱好者制作和使用.