Technology evaluation in Taiwan's technology industries: Strategies, trajectories, and innovations

Technology evaluation, as an organizational process, is the essential ability to comprehend the values of technologies very soon after they emerge. Meanwhile, the technology evaluation process is inevitably influenced by the firm's industrial context, such as its technological trajectory. This study defines technology evaluation strategy in terms of the processes, methods, and participants involved, and uses this definition as a taxonomy to explore different types of technology evaluation strategies. A survey on the technological industries is conducted to explore types of technology evaluation strategies and their relationships with the advantages of different types of innovation under the effects of different technological trajectories. The survey identifies four types of technology evaluation strategies, namely, those of the flexible executive strategist, the emergent executive intuitionist, the deliberate quantitative strategist, and the deliberate consensual strategist, are identified. This study has found that certain types of technology evaluation strategies have better innovation performances than the others. The patterns of technological trajectories are also found to influence a firm's technology evaluation strategy and the advantages of certain types of innovations. The established explanations of the relationships among the technological trajectory, innovation type, and technology evaluation strategies may guide technology businesses to develop a better technology evaluation capability. The theoretical framework developed in this research enriches the strategic management literature with a new taxonomy for technology evaluation strategies.     

Superexponential long-term trends in information technology

Moore's Law has created a popular perception of exponential progress in information technology. But is the progress of IT really exponential? In this paper we examine long time series of data documenting progress in information technology gathered by [1]. We analyze six different historical trends of progress for several technologies grouped into the following three functional tasks: information storage, information transportation (bandwidth), and information transformation (speed of computation). Five of the six datasets extend back to the nineteenth century. We perform statistical analyses and show that in all six cases one can reject the exponential hypothesis at statistically significant levels. In contrast, one cannot reject the hypothesis of superexponential growth with decreasing doubling times. This raises questions about whether past trends in the improvement of information technology are sustainable.     

The state of research on technological uncertainties, social uncertainties and emerging markets: A multidisciplinary literature review

The objective of this research work is to study the progress of research on technological uncertainties, social uncertainties and emerging markets and outline and identify the key disciplines, journals, articles and authors. For this the author studied the existing literature from the various fields in which technological uncertainties, social uncertainties and emerging markets research work have been published using ISI Web of Knowledge database. The paper finds that there is increasing research work on technological uncertainties, social uncertainties and emerging markets and the bibliographical search resulted in ninety-one documents written by one-hundred-sixty-one authors in eighty-four journals in seventy-two disciplines. The five major disciplines and their underlying journals are business and economics, agriculture, psychology, public administration, and environmental sciences and ecology accounting for majority of publications. In journals the most prolific, measured by number of articles published are Harvard Business Review, Social Science and Medicine, World Development, and Higher Education; and most influential, measured by the global citation received, are Harvard Business Review, Social Science and Medicine and Sociological Review. The top 10% of the journals are responsible for 23% of all publications but 85% of all global citations received. This highlights that despite the high, diverse and increasing number of journals; only few are dominating and shaping the research arena of technological uncertainties, social uncertainties and emerging markets. Further, in the ten most cited articles, no author appears more than once.     

Industry changes in technology and complementary assets and the creation of high-growth firms

This study uses employment data to examine why some industries host more new high-growth firms than others. Using a unique data base of 201 industries over a 15-year period, we find that increases in the proportion of employment of scientists and engineers in industries are positively associated with counts of fast-growing new firms; however, we do not detect a relationship between fluctuations in the proportion of employment in sales and production occupations and counts of fast-growing new firms. The findings suggest that technological innovation is an important determinant of entrepreneurial opportunity. Further, they suggest that private new firms are an important means of organizing commercial innovation and that new firms may be less constrained by complementary assets than has been previously understood.     

日本电动汽车产业的发展与启示

创造适宜的产业环境、优化技术路线、加快基础设施建设、强化市场推广、推动产业优化升级、促进国际合作是日本电动汽车发展的基本经验.日本政府的新一代电动汽车战略也雄心勃勃.充分借鉴日本经验,坚持官产学联盟、加快自主创新、完善产业政策是中国电动汽车产业后来居上的捷径.     

上市公司R & D投入与其成长的相关性研究

本文采用上证A股中小板块的55家上市公司所披露的2011年度报表信息为数据样本，并从偿债能力、资产运营能力、发展能力和盈利能力四个方面的10个指标通过因子分析法来研究公司的成长性，从而得到公司成长性的得分。然后，以公司成长性得分作为因变量，以R&D投入强度和技术人员投入比率、技术人员素质为自变量通过回归法研究上市公司R&D的投入与其成长的数理关系。通过研究得出以下结论：R&D强度对企业成长性的影响为正，相关系数为2.2373，说明影响较大；技术人员投入比率对企业成长影响为正，相关系数为0.72，说明具有一定的促进作用，但作用效果与R&D强度相比小的多；但技术人员的素质与企业的成长不存在相关性。     

A review of experience curve analyses for energy demand technologies

Transitioning towards a sustainable energy system requires the large-scale introduction of novel energy demand and supply technologies. Such novel technologies are often expensive at the point of their market introduction but eventually become cheaper due to technological learning. In order to quantify potentials for price and cost decline, the experience curve approach has been extensively applied to renewable and non-renewable energy supply technologies. However, its application to energy demand technologies is far less frequent. Here, we provide the first comprehensive review of experience curve analyses for energy demand technologies. We find a widespread trend towards declining prices and costs at an average learning rate of 18 ± 9%. This finding is consistent with the results for energy supply technologies and for manufacturing in general. Learning rates for individual energy demand technologies are symmetrically distributed around the arithmetic mean of the data sample. Absolute variation of learning rates within individual technology clusters of 7 ± 4%-points and between technology clusters of 7 ± 5%-points both contribute to the overall variability of learning rates. Our results show that technological learning is as important for energy demand technologies as it is for energy supply technologies. Applying the experience curve approach to forecast technology costs involves, however, unresolved uncertainties, as we demonstrate in a case study for the micro-cogeneration technology.     

虚拟仪器技术对知识创造的影响研究

仪器作为现代科学研究的核心组成部分，在很大程度上决定了科学知识的产出。虚拟仪器技术对知识创造产生了深远影响。“软件就是仪器”的理念使得传统仪器、测量观念以及仪器作为科技黑箱的内涵和功能发生了质的变化。虚拟仪器在集成大量编码知识的同时更多地集成了主体的隐性知识，虚拟仪器技术通过对主体知识体系的重塑影响了知识创造。主体只有通过长时间、复杂的学习和使用过程才能充分发挥虚拟仪器技术在知识创造中的优势，实现编码知识和隐性知识的共同增长。     

Technological diversity,knowledge flow and capacity,and industrial innovation

ABSTRACT

This article examines the effect of technological diversity, knowledge flow and capacity on industrial innovation performance. We suggest that there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between technological diversity and industrial innovation performance. Moreover, knowledge flow and knowledge capacity are hypothesised as negatively moderating the effect of technological diversity on industrial innovation performance. We use negative binomial regression to test the hypotheses in a panel data of 360 industry-year cases and the findings support our prediction. Managerial implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Innovative Practice——Shipping Magnate CY Tung's Road to Success

CY Tung was the pioneer of innovation and the practioner of innovative theories in modern shipping, regardless of his huge oil tanker building, container transport, institutional management or resource integration. Tung, the shipping industry have called the pioneer of innovation, Tung's road to success is a story and history of continuous innovation. In his shipping career, adhering to the innovative concept, multi-use new shipping technology, and management practice, Tung had built a team with the ability to innovate. Tung's group, by integrating its human resources, contacts and production resources ultimately established himself in the highly competitive international shipping market and achieved his legendary of the world shipping tycoon.