Abstract

万方数据知识服务平台-中外学术论文、中外标准、中外专利、科技成果、政策法规等科技文献的在线服务平台。     

Abstract

万方数据知识服务平台-中外学术论文、中外标准、中外专利、科技成果、政策法规等科技文献的在线服务平台。     

Abstract

万方数据知识服务平台-中外学术论文、中外标准、中外专利、科技成果、政策法规等科技文献的在线服务平台。     

Innovation: the classic traps

Never a fad, but always in or out of fashion, innovation gets rediscovered as a growth enabler every half dozen years. Too often, though, grand declarations about innovation are followed by mediocre execution that produces anemic results, and innovation groups are quietly disbanded in cost-cutting drives. Each managerial generation embarks on the same enthusiastic quest for the next new thing. And each generation faces the same vexing challenges- most of which stem from the tensions between protecting existing revenue streams critical to current success and supporting new concepts that may be crucial to future success. In this article, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter reflects on the four major waves of innovation enthusiasm she's observed over the past 25 years. She describes the classic mistakes companies make in innovation strategy, process, structure, and skills assessment, illustrating her points with a plethora of real-world examples--including AT&T Worldnet, Timberland, and Ocean Spray. A typical strategic blunder is when managers set their hurdles too high or limit the scope of their innovation efforts. Quaker Oats, for instance, was so busy in the 1990s making minor tweaks to its product formulas that it missed larger opportunities in distribution. A common process mistake is when managers strangle innovation efforts with the same rigid planning, budgeting, and reviewing approaches they use in their existing businesses--thereby discouraging people from adapting as circumstances warrant. Companies must be careful how they structure fledgling entities alongside existing ones, Kanter says, to avoid a clash of cultures and agendas--which Arrow Electronics experienced in its attempts to create an online venture. Finally, companies commonly undervalue and underinvest in the human side of innovation--for instance, promoting individuals out of innovation teams long before their efforts can pay off. Kanter offers practical advice for avoiding these traps.     

Abstract credibility

Abstract

This paper falls into three parts. The first part (Sections 1 to 4) consists of an attempt to consolidate the existing credibility models, which are rapidly becoming more numerous, by constructing one large all-embracing model. In order to do this, it is necessary to abstract from the usual setting of Credibility Theory, the insurance world, and work in more abstract Hilbert spaces. This increases the complexity of the theory, but the results appear nevertheless in a form familiar to credibility theorists.

The second part (Section 5) shows that, in the so-called inhomogeneous case of credibility estimation, best estimates are obtained if one uses sufficient statistics, a result which has previously been known under much more restricted circumstances. In the same section it is pointed out that the validity of the analogous result in the homogeneous case is by no means obvious.

The third part (Section 6) demonstrates that a number of existing credibility models can be derived as special cases of the model developed here, and goes on to deal briefly with a couple of new models which arise naturally out of the abstract credibility formulation.