Organizing innovation projects under technological turbulence

Research on the organization of innovation projects suggests that increased project flexibility is a common reaction to high levels of technological turbulence. However, existing definitions of project flexibility are inconsistent and sometimes unclear, and empirical evidence is limited. This article makes an important distinction between flexible project planning and flexible project specifications. A negative relationship is found between flexible project planning and innovation project performance, whereas flexible product specifications are found to contribute positively.This article also examines how technological turbulence contributes to the choice of flexible or inflexible strategies. Technological turbulence can be present in the external environment or can be internal to the firm, when radically new products are developed. The findings suggest that when businesses perceive technological turbulence in the environment they are more likely to adopt flexible approaches to innovation in an attempt to adapt to external pressures. In technologically innovative projects, product specifications are likely to remain fixed while project organization is likely to be adapted to the needs of the project.Taken together, the findings suggest that innovation projects should maintain stable organization, schedules and budgets, but stay flexible about product specifications. Vigilance with regards to external and internal conditions of technological turbulence, which may lead organizations to be more flexible in terms of project planning, is needed.     

Innovation through Experience Staging: Motives and Outcomes

There is a growing recognition of the opportunities of innovation through experience staging. The literature, however, tends to focus on high‐profile examples of firms from largely hedonic sectors, such as entertainment and hospitality. These cases provide vivid and persuasive examples, but they fail to address how firms outside these sectors can join the experience economy—a term coined in 1998 by Pine and Gilmore—by developing new products and services with experiences at their core. The paper reports on two studies undertaken to examine why firms that do not belong to sectors that are largely hedonic innovate through experience staging and how they benefit from doing so. The first study is an in‐depth case study of 15 diverse firms, which examines these firms' motives for pursuing innovation through experience staging. The second study is a two‐year longitudinal quantitative survey of 131 small‐ and medium‐sized firms (SMEs) to address the question of the benefits that firms that do not have strong brands can gain by from innovation through staging experiences. The first study provides the basis for classifying firms along two dimensions depending on the nature of the new products or services (referred to collectively as offerings) they create. The first dimension has to do with whether new offerings have a functional or experiential core. The second dimension has to do with the degree of experiential augmentation applied to offerings. The first study suggests that firms adopt an experience‐staging strategy to innovation based on both outward‐facing and inward‐facing motives. The outward‐facing motives include improving a firm's image in its market, entering new markets, and attracting new customers. The inward‐facing motives include improving a firm's attractiveness to employees and increasing profitability. The results of the second study suggest that creating offerings with an experiential core can contribute to success by enhancing a firm's image, its attractiveness to employees, and its ability to enter new markets. Moreover, experiential augmentation contributes to profitability, new customer attraction, and employee attractiveness. This research has important implications for theory and practice. In the first place, this research extends existing theory about experience staging to firms outside sectors that are largely hedonic. In the second place, the managerial implications are that innovation through experience staging can be an effective way for SMEs, even those outside industries, such as entertainment or hospitality, to create competitive advantage.     

从LED的配光曲线谈起

在对封装后的LED的50多个参数的测量中,最重要的要数发光强度的光谱分布和空间分布。因为近20个色度量的参数都可溯源到前者,只有正确度高的发光强度光谱分布才能导出不确定度小的色度量诸参数。而发光强度空间分布的测量质量不但直接影响到LED总光通量的测量精度,以及随之得到的发光效率,此外,它还能反映出LED其他方面的性能。     

认识照明LED

随着新一代半导体材料氮化镓的突破,高亮度蓝、绿色发光二极管尤其是白色发光二极管(LED)的问世,半导体技术的发展继引发微电子革命后又在孕育一场新的产业革命——照明革命。白色 LED光源有望成为继白炽灯、荧光灯和高强度气体放电灯之后的第四代光源。研究并深入认识LED在照明领域中的应用是我们面临的新课题。     

江苏省蔬菜生产比较优势的时空变化分析

［目的］基于近15年的江苏省农业统计资料，分析江苏省蔬菜生产比较优势的空间异质性以及历史演变规律，为蔬菜产业结构优化及农业结构调整提供决策依据。［方法］采用生产规模优势指数、生产效率优势指数、综合比较优势指数测算蔬菜生产比较优势。利用GIS技术对农作物比较优势进行空间异质性分析。［结果］（1）近年来江苏省蔬菜生产综合比较优势指数最高的4个市从高到低为徐州市、苏州市、南京市、无锡市，最低的4个市从低到高为淮安市、镇江市、扬州市、泰州市； （2）空间自相关分析发现，江苏省蔬菜生产综合比较优势属于空间随机分布； “高高”型的高值聚集区包括丰县、沛县、大丰区、东台市、无锡市区、苏州市区、吴中区，“低低”型的低值聚集区包括宝应县、高邮市、金湖县； （3）近15年来江苏省蔬菜生产综合比较优势指数的空间分布格局变化不大； 与2002年相比，2017年苏南地区的蔬菜生产综合比较优势指数整体提升幅度较大，苏北地区、苏中地区的大部分地区的综合比较优势指数则有不同程度下降。［结论］建议江苏省苏北地区蔬菜生产的侧重点是规模化，重点布局徐州市蔬菜产区，并在宿迁市、盐城市适当发展蔬菜产业； 二是苏南地区蔬菜生产的侧重点是精品化，重点布局南京市、苏州市、无锡市蔬菜产业； 苏中地区蔬菜生产的侧重点是特色化，南通市要衔接好上海市的蔬菜市场，扬州市、泰州市重点发展具有当地特色的水生类蔬菜。     

Antecedents of Innovation Strategies in New Technology‐based Firms: Interactions between the Environment and Founder Team Composition

This research contributes to the ongoing stream of research on the integration of technical and business knowledge for successful innovation, but does so with a unique focus—that of new firm founder teams. This is in contrast to much of the existing literature, which focuses on organizational units in large firms. As part of their strategy for success, new technology‐based firms need to find an optimal balance between exploration and exploitation in their innovation activities. However, the resource constraints they typically face make it difficult for them to pursue both at the same time, which means that at any given point in time they are likely to opt for either exploration or exploitation rather than both. The purpose of this research is to investigate what influences new technology‐based firms to select one innovation strategy over another. Data collected in 145 new technology‐based firms are used to test hypotheses about how environmental conditions and founder team composition interact in their contributions to choice of innovation strategy. Based on hierarchical regression analysis of the data, the research findings suggest that teams consisting of individuals who have dissimilar backgrounds are more likely to adapt their innovation strategy to the characteristics of the environment than teams of individuals with similar backgrounds. Conversely, teams consisting of individuals with similar backgrounds are more likely to continue to follow their preferred strategy. However, as competitive intensity or environmental dynamism increases, such teams are likely to deviate from their preferred strategy.     

Benefits of Aesthetic Design as an Element of New Service Development*

The goal of this research is to investigate the benefits that may be gained from using aesthetic design in new service development. The research is performed in two phases. In the first phase, case research examining the use of aesthetic design in 16 new service development projects in new technology‐based firms is used to determine the objectives underlying managers' decisions to use aesthetic design in new service development. The results of the case research suggest that the objectives underlying managers' decisions to use aesthetic design in new service development are attracting new customers, creating and fostering a positive image of their firm in their market, retaining existing customers, and doing so at lower cost. In the second phase, the results of the case research are used to generate hypotheses that are tested using longitudinal survey data collected in 98 new technology‐based firms. The findings suggest that by and large the benefits expected by managers are realized. The practitioner implications of this research are that new technology‐based firms that emphasize the use of aesthetic design in new service development can expect to have a greater proportion of sales from new customers, be less dependent on a few large customers, be more successful in entering new markets, have a more favorable firm image, and enjoy higher turnover growth from existing customers and higher profits than comparable firms not using aesthetic design. The data do not provide support for the hypothesis that firms using aesthetic design in new service development will have customers that are less inclined to switch their allegiance to competitors, whereas it does support the hypothesis that firms using aesthetic design will enjoy higher turnover growth from existing customers than others. This could indicate that, although firms cannot expect to retain customer loyalty based on aesthetic design, they can expect to earn greater revenues from customers who do remain loyal if they emphasize aesthetic design.     

Exploring the Relationship Between Aesthetic Design as an Element of New Service Development and Performance*

The purpose of this research is to investigate the conditions under which the use of aesthetic design as an element of new service development is likely to improve performance—more specifically, to empirically examine how aesthetic design can contribute to competitive advantage, resistance to imitation, and profitability, and how these contributions are moderated by the process of commoditization. Based on analysis of three rounds of longitudinal data collected one year apart in a population of new technology‐based firms, the findings are that aesthetic design as an element of new service development can contribute positively to competitive advantage, resistance to imitation, and profitability, but that the effectiveness of using aesthetic design to achieve these outcomes differs depending on the level of commoditization. Positive relationships are found between the use of aesthetic design and competitive advantage and profitability, respectively, when the level of commoditization is high. Furthermore, the positive relationship between aesthetic design and resistance to service imitation is stronger when the relative importance of aesthetic design in a firms' sector is low, that is, conditions under which aesthetic design is not already expected. This research suggests that practitioners should consider using aesthetic design to counteract commoditization when the markets in which they compete are characterized by ready access to services that meet customers' needs and expectations for features, performance, and reliability, and expectations for aesthetic design have not already become established. Furthermore, they should be aware that the use of aesthetic design may turn into a baseline customer requirement, implying that while attention to aesthetic design is necessary to compete it may cease to constitute a potential source of competitive advantage.     

Benefits of Customer Codevelopment of New Products: The Moderating Effects of Utilitarian and Hedonic Radicalness

There is growing belief in the value of actively involving customers in innovation, commonly referred to as customer codevelopment or cocreation. These strategies are generally believed to be beneficial, although contingent views are prevalent. A widely espoused contingent view is that the positive contribution of customer codevelopment is dependent on the degree of radicalness (or innovativeness) of the products being developed. Some work argues that customer codevelopment is more useful for incremental innovation, whereas other work claims that customer codevelopment is more valuable when innovation is radical. This research makes an important contribution to this discourse by making a distinction between utilitarian radicalness and hedonic radicalness. Utilitarian radicalness refers to the degree to which an innovation is novel in terms of technology and functionality, whereas hedonic radicalness refers to the degree to which an innovation is novel in terms of sensorial, emotional, or symbolic aspects. Hypotheses about the contribution of customer codevelopment to market success depending on levels of utilitarian and hedonic radicalness are tested using dual‐respondent data about a large sample of innovation projects. The findings suggest that the contribution of customer codevelopment to market success is positively moderated by utilitarian radicalness and negatively moderated by hedonic radicalness. This underlines the importance of taking not only the level, but also the nature, of radicalness into account when making decisions about customer codevelopment.     

Leveraging Social Network Sites in New Product Development: Opportunity or Hype?

Leveraging social network sites is high on the list of priorities for a lot of businesses that are eager to find more effective ways to reach, learn about, and engage customers in new product development (NPD). However, the rapidly changing landscape of social network sites can be difficult to navigate successfully and doubts remain about whether and how they can be used to good effect. In fact, empirical research confirming a positive relationship between the use of social network sites in NPD and business performance is scarce. This paper reports on research examining the use of social network sites for three purposes, namely for market research guiding the development of new products, for getting customers to collaborate in the NPD process, and for new product launch. The results of this research suggest that the benefits expected from using social network sites in NPD are largely not being realized by businesses. Using social network sites to conduct market research leading into the NPD process was not found to contribute to business performance, and in fact was found to have negative relationships with both profitability and market growth. Using social network sites to get customers to collaborate in the NPD process was found to be positively related with innovativeness but not with market growth or profitability. Finally, using social network sites for new product launch was where the most positive indications were seen, since this was found to be positively related with innovativeness, market growth, and profitability. Thus, it appears that while businesses may get good results from using social network sites for product launch, they still have a learning curve to traverse before they can successfully use them for market research or customer collaboration in NPD. While there is currently a great deal of enthusiasm—even hype—about the potential opportunities of using social network sites for NPD, this research suggests that businesses should move carefully and recognize that just jumping on the social network bandwagon will not insure success.