A methodology for the construction of dynamic capabilities in industrial networks: The role of border agents

The article presents a methodology for the formation and functioning of industrial networks that favors the development of dynamic capabilities with regard to the creation, integration, transfer and absorption of knowledge. This methodology has been put into practice in a case study: Lignum Facile. The presence of some misalignments between our initial proposal and its implementation helped us reshape and emphasize particular processes and flows associated to the methodology. Beyond the typical localization and agglomeration advantages, the analysis suggests that the success in the formation and functioning of industrial networks is mainly related to their potential to formulate immaterial relationships capable of stimulating learning processes, the dissemination of technological knowledge and innovative activities. Particularly, we found that the inclusion of border agents – intermediaries between the market and industry such as architects, engineers or designers – is fundamental to develop innovations at the intersection of different scientific and technological disciplines.     

Principles of New Product Management: Exploring the Beliefs of Product Practitioners

Conventional wisdom might lead us to conclude that the various disciplines involved in product development and management are often at cross-purposes. For example, practitioners from R&D and engineering have been known to suggest that marketing fails to understand the technical trade-offs involved in product management decisions. Conversely, marketing professionals sometimes complain that their technology-oriented colleagues pursue product development initiatives without adequate market awareness. And practitioners from both sides of this debate have asserted that research on new product development tends to be of the ivory tower variety, with little or no relevance for industry. Are such complaints valid? Perhaps it is time for a reality check. By searching academic literature on product development, Roger J. Calantone, C. Anthony Di Benedetto, and Ted Haggblom have compiled a list of 40 fundamental principles of new product development. This list forms the basis for a survey of new product practitioners from marketing and technical disciplines. The study provides a means for assessing whether practitioners agree with the fundamental principles of new product development that are identified in current academic literature. By obtaining responses from both marketing and technical professionals, the survey also sheds light on whether those two groups hold fundamentally different beliefs regarding new product development. The survey results reveal strong overall agreement among practitioners regarding these fundamental principles of new product management. Managers believe that 80% of the principles are either usually or almost always true. In other words, the survey results support the idea that the academic community is pursuing research issues that are relevant to practitioners, and that they are reaching valid conclusions. There are only a few cases in which the responses from the technical and marketing practitioners differ. Those disagreements probably result from differences in the basic orientations of the two groups. For example, it is not surprising that marketing managers would be more likely to agree that “product users and the marketplace form the most important source for new product ideas,” while technical managers more strongly support the idea that “radically new technologies constitute an important source of new product ideas.” The respondents noted overall disagreement with only a few of the 40 principles. In many of these cases, the academic literature has reached mixed conclusions. In other words, these “principles” might actually be oversimplifications, and further research is probably needed before we can fully understand the issues involved.     

Transforming Engineering Concepts for Technical and Vocational Teacher Education

Technical education involves programmes, disciplines, but also a level of competence to be reached by students, in reference to social practices outside of school. Technical teacher education must not only include competence in these social practices but must also develop specific, practical teaching skills. Today a rapid evolution in academic disciplines has been observed, partially linked to the circulation of models. the present study is concerned with the transformation of models within these exchanges and attempts to extract knowledge that would be useful for decisions to be made concerning teacher education.     

Consequential creativity

Creativity is an original cognitive ability and problem solving process which enables individuals to use their intelligence in a way that is unique and directed toward coming up with a product. Architectural education is one of the fields in which human creativity has been exhibited; because, it can be defined as a design study that correlates with other disciplines: social sciences, management, history, operational research, philosophy, graphic design, math and etc. These features which distinguish architecture from other disciplines ascribe different kind of responsibilities for architectural education; since beside technical and professional skills, an architect must have imagination and to be creative at many levels. Thus, this research aims at proving that students can be trained in creative thinking via acquiring specific skills and systematic techniques, which directly acts on design product. The study methodology depends on the concept of experimental research that targets at exposing students to creative problem solving experience via carrying out a creative training course that concerns “Consequential Creativity”. That experiment examined the potentiality of enhancing the students’ ability of viewing problems in non-traditional perspectives that counts on the systematic procedures of problem solving. Tools for assessment before and after training have been implemented. The Experiment findings proved that the students’ creative thinking skill has been clearly improved after attending the course. Therefore, training in creative thinking can be considered as independent courses or within specific architectural curricula.     

Rehearsal of professional practice: impacts of web-based collaborative learning on the future encounter of different disciplines

This study argues that the shift towards a more multidisciplinary professional life in contemporary design practice requires design curricula to equip students with collaborative skills. The study offers that by the aid of web-based collaborative learning (WBCL) in design education, different disciplines may be brought together during their education. A case study is held as a rehearsal of professional life; involving architecture and interior architecture students collaborating on a common project, using WBCL. The evaluations of the participating students about the process were analyzed. The findings convey that there is a mutual problem of recognition of professional domains. In order to diagnose and possibly reconcile tensions that may occur due to this problem in professional life, this paper asserts that integrating interdisciplinary work to the design curricula would be beneficial.     

＂印后加工技术＂课程教学改革探讨

＂印后加工技术＂是印刷工程本科专业的一门重要的专业核心课程.本论文根据印刷工程本科专业的教学特点,在＂印后加工技术＂课程教学中,从培养印刷工程专业学生的实践技能和素质教育,深化教学改革,构建合理的课程体系与完善的教学内容入手,利用各种教学方法和手段,提高学生的培养质量;加强实践环节,在培养学生实际技能等方面提出了一些教学改革的设想和措施.     

Industrial use of public sector research in advanced technologies: a comparison of biotechnology and ceramics

Industrial use of public sector research (PSR) is characterised by considerable diversity: both the nature and extent of linkage varies according to, amongst other factors, firm size, industrial sector and research field. The study reported here aims to understand better some of this diversity by comparing two fields—biotechnology and advanced ceramics. It employs a methodology which focuses on the precise character of scientific and technological inputs (STI) which companies seek and obtain during new product development. The results reveal significant similarities between the technologies: the importance to innovation of a synthesis between formal knowledge and tacit firm-specific skills; and the reliance on PSR for both new knowledge and new research techniques and instruments. Variance in STI flows appears to be related to the particular character of new product development in the relevant industrial sectors; differences in the development and dynamism of the technologies; and in the availability of requisite expertise and knowledge in PSR.     

Research-Based Pedagogy For New Product Development: MBA's Versus Engineers In Different Countries1

An experiential exercise based on the meta‐analysis results reported by Montoya‐Weiss and Calantone [22] was used in eleven graduate classes, all electives in technology management, at five different institutions in the U.S., Germany, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, during the period 1999–2001. The purpose of this article is to describe the details of this exercise used to promote awareness of the process leading to relative success of new product commercialization and the results of testing hypotheses on the differences between classes from different countries (i.e., in Europe and the U.S), and professional disciplines. During the sixth meeting of the course, new product development is introduced to the class using a discussion of the value of academic research in this field. First, the results of the meta‐analysis are reviewed and then converted to a method that can be used to screen new product introduction cases for potential success. The entire exercise is devoted to the prime factors that drive commercial success of new products. This is done as part of a larger unit on new product development in the context of technological innovation. Second, students are collectively asked to evaluate the potential of the introduction of a new ultrasound product described in a business publication article, which serves as the teaching case in this instance. The exercise culminates with the class “voting” on the probability of success of this new ultrasound product introduced in the short case. Predicted differences in the form of more optimistic probability estimates turned out to be supported for class composition (e.g., discipline) but not for country (U.S. vs. rest‐of‐world). Although all classes correctly predicted the eventual success of this new product (>60% success rate), graduate engineers were significantly more pessimistic than heterogeneous groups of MBA students in their average probability estimates for new product success (grand mean of 62% vs. 75% respectively). Implications of these results are discussed. Future research might investigate the sources of these differences and the subtle differences within, as well as between, these groups. For example, in MBA classes, the differences between marketing and operations majors might be important and for technical professionals, the differences between electrical engineers and mechanical engineers would make a good comparison. Further, a broader range of geographic regions could be evaluated such as Asia and South America. The results of interventions to promote optimal diversity in new product and venture teams might also be a valuable research stream. © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.     

How Canon and Sony Drive Product Innovation Through Networking and Application-Focused R&D

To ensure the ongoing vitality of a company's product offerings, R&D professionals must play a daunting array of roles. The already rapid, yet still accelerating, pace of technological change may lead some companies to devote more resources to intensive internal research efforts. However, the shift toward global competition demands a more market-oriented focus from R&D; clear understanding of current and potential markets must drive R&D efforts. And efficient, cost-effective manufacturing of new products requires an R&D organization that understands and interacts effectively with the production department. How does a company create an environment in which its R&D organization comprises market-savvy, production-friendly experts in diverse technologies? With case studies of R&D efforts at Canon and Sony, Sigvald Harryson identifies and illustrates the key mechanisms that these companies use to foster product innovation. His examples show how Canon and Sony use a combination of external and internal networking mechanisms to identify and acquire key technologies and related skills, gain market knowledge, improve the results of internal R&D efforts, and ensure the successful transfer of these results to efficient production processes. He identifies four key mechanisms underlying successful product innovation at Canon and Sony: strategic training and job rotation for engineers, application-driven R&D, direct transfer of development teams from R&D to production, and extensive networking with external centers of excellence and key suppliers. At Canon, the initial training program for all researchers and engineers begins with three months of work on a production line. Sony's new researchers and development engineers spend one month in production. Both companies also give their new R&D professionals three months of training in sales and marketing. The emphasis on market-driven research at both companies means that researchers have identified some commercial application for almost every initial research proposal that gains approval. Neither company treats research as a long-term assignment; almost all engineers at both companies eventually move from the labs to production. And rather than viewing this job rotation strategy as a drain on the technological expertise in their labs, both companies rely on strong external networks with key suppliers and university-based researchers as important sources for acquiring new technologies and the competencies needed to support them.     

When mind, heart, and hands meet: communication design and designers

Hong Kong’s transformation from a manufacturing to a knowledge-based economy has prompted the local government to promote the city as a regional design center. The 2008 Policy Address delivered by Hong Kong’s Chief Executive calls for the creation of a large pool of creative and knowledgeable talent. The government recognizes that, in addition to disciplinary knowledge and skills, the high-quality workforce demanded by the economic transition requires creativity and broader competences. The University Grants Committee of Hong Kong considers outcome-based education (OBE) the best approach to developing a workforce qualified to meet the demands of the professional marketplace and, accordingly, is strongly encouraging its deployment in all higher education institutions. This article investigates the effects of the OBE approach on the curriculum revision, implementation, and evaluation of a two-semester undergraduate-level communication design course that was selected for an OBE pilot study at the author’s university. To establish stronger linkage between the academic and professional contexts, it was deemed necessary to seek the opinions of experienced design practitioners about the attributes they expect of graduates and the methods they employ in training junior designers. The author conducted in-depth interviews with 13 art/creative directors from 11 design agencies in Hong Kong in 2007. Their opinions were incorporated into the formulation of intended learning outcomes (ILOs), teaching and learning activities (TLAs), and assessment tasks (ATs) for the revised outcome-based course curriculum, which was then implemented in the 2008–2009 academic year. This article reports the findings of the aforementioned interviews and discusses the design of the revised curriculum with illustration from samples of students’ creative projects. It also provides a preliminary evaluation of the effectiveness of the course design and student learning, as revealed in quantitative and qualitative feedback from students and in the course designer’s self-reflection.     

Coordination of Design Supply Chains for Bundling Physical and Software Products*

Research on product development management has concentrated on physical products or on software, but not both. This article explores a special new product development (NPD) approach in which the internal development of core physical products is augmented by bundled and largely outsourced software features. We studied a medical device producer that has established a new medical information product group (MIPG) within their NPD organization to create software features that are bundled with their core physical products. The MIPG has conceptualized these software features as multiple software development projects, and then coordinated their realization largely through the use of external software suppliers. This case study centers on the question: how can firms effectively coordinate such product development processes? Our analysis of case evidence and related literature suggests that such product bundling processes, when pursued through design supply chains (DSC), are more complex than is typical for the development of streams of either physical products or software products individually. We observe that DSC coordination transcends the requirements associated with traditional “stage‐gate” NPD processes used for physical product development. Managers in DSC settings face a tension inherent to distributed work: keeping internal and external development efforts separate to exploit the design capabilities within a network of software suppliers, while ensuring effective delivery of a stream of bundled products. Many managers face this coordination tension with little, if any, prior knowledge of how to create a streamlined and effective DSC. Our research indicates that these managers need to make a series of interrelated decisions: the number of suppliers to qualify and include in or exclude from the DSC; the basis for measuring and modifying the scope of the suppliers' work; the need to account for asymmetric cost structures and expertise across the DSC; the mechanisms for synchronizing development work across elements of the DSC; and the approaches for developing skills—both technical and administrative—that project managers need for utilizing in‐house competencies while acquiring and assimilating design know‐how from external development organizations. When managers take a flexible approach toward these decisions based on a modular set of software development projects, they can improve their NPD outcomes through technical and organizational experimentation and adjust their own resource deployment to best utilize the suppliers' capabilities within their DSC.     

Reflection and professional identity development in design education

Design thinking positions designers as the drivers of the design space yet academic discourse is largely silent on the topic of professional identity development in design. Professional identity, or the dynamic narratives that individuals construct and maintain to integrate their personal qualities with professional responsibilities, has not been widely addressed in design education either. The study investigated the use of reflective writing in an introductory design course to help students explore and interpret their design beliefs, experiences, and self-awareness in support of professional identity development work. The results indicate that authorial presence, analysis, and narrative quality are common qualities in reflective responses, but emotion is notably lacking from student writing. Students were highly reflective in relation to a general experience with uncertainty and were least reflective when discussing ideation processes. Implications for design education and related research are analysed and discussed.     

Teaching-practice as a critical bridge for narrowing the research-practice gap

Management researchers and management practitioners increasingly appear to be talking past each other. A solution lies in understanding that interactive management education has an important role to play in bridging this divide, but for some reason this mode of academic exchange is often forgotten. Our paper broadens the stakeholder value perspective to explore how and why the interests of researchers and practitioners have diverged, before going on to present illustrative cases of programs attempting to bridge such differences. Current conditions suggest that the dissonance between different cycle-times of research and practice is not sustainable with the inevitable outcome of a shrinking commons. Generating new knowledge and propagating it rapidly through education and teaching-practice is an important way of disseminating higher-order research and findings. In a world where academic relevance is under threat, enabling academics to better cross such a divide is critical. Marketing-management researchers and teachers ironically have their own challenge of taking what can be a complex theory (the marketing academic equivalent of a “sausage”) and making it “sizzle”.     

A Synergy Between the Technological Process and a Methodology for Web Design: Implications for Technological Problem Solving and Design

Traditional instructional methodology in the Information System Design (ISD) environment lacks explicit strategies for promoting the cognitive skills of prospective system designers. This contributes to the fragmented knowledge and low motivational and creative involvement of learners in system design tasks. In addition, present ISD methodologies, including web design methodologies, do not focus sufficiently on technological problem solving and design. Engagement in system design tasks demands critical thinking [Shelly, Cashman & Rosenblatt, 2001, Systems Analysis and Design, 4th edn. Course Technology, Boston] and abstraction skills [Harris, 1999, Systems Analysis and Design for the Small Enterprise, The Dryden Press, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Fort Worth]. The aim of this paper is to explain a synergy between the technological process and web design methodology and its influence on the development of the cognitive skills of learners in the ISD context. In this research, the Team Structure Software Process (TSSP) methodology was integrated with the stages of the technological process. An interface approach between Information Systems and Technology Education was adopted during the implementation of an Instructional Web Design Program (IWDP), which served as a framework for building a software product. This research was based on a qualitative, action-research approach where individual interviews, focus group interviews, observation and document sources were used to gather data. Seventeen students at an institution of higher education were observed and their experiences were investigated through a focus group interview, journals and an essay. In addition, an interview with the teacher was conducted to investigate her thoughts and feelings during the implementation of the IWDP. During the implementation of the IWDP, multi-method learning was promoted, enlarging learners' insight into the design process and a climate for enhancing intellectual processes and skills created [Jakovljevic, 2002, An Instructional Model for Teaching Complex Thinking through Web Page Design, DEd thesis, Rand Afrikaan University, Johannesburg] This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

浅析高职教育中实施理实一体化教学模式的现状

经济的迅速发展及严峻的就业形式,给高职教育提出了新的要求,即突出学生的专业技能的培养。为适应这一要求,高职教育中实施了理实一体化教学模式即以职业标准要求为培养目标,以专业技能训练为核心,确定所需的专业知识,将理论教学与技能训练有机结合起来。这种教学不是简单的理论加实践教学,而是理论与实践在整个教学过程中交互进行,理论中有实践,实践中有理论。它突破了以往理论与实践相脱节的现象,既强调充分发挥教师的主导作用,又突出学生专业技能的培养。本文将浅析高职教育中实施理实一体化教学模式的现状。     

Colourful practice: Is design education informing architects’ use of colour?

This paper sets out to consider the relationship between design education, architects’ colour knowledge, colour orientations and colour use in design practice. Specifically, a survey of 274 architects, architectural academics and postgraduates in Australia and Iran addressed the questions—is design education informing colour knowledge, and does colour education and knowledge inform an architect’s colour use in their designs? The findings suggest colour use in architecture has two chief influences: (1) Colour Orientation (architects’ general attitudes and prejudices towards colour use); and (2) Contextual Variables (the cultural and physical context of designs). The study shows that while the amount of colour education that architects receive has little role in informing their colourfulness orientations (i.e., how colourful they believe architecture in general should be), the greater an architect’s colour knowledge the more colourful their designs will be. The study suggests that the colourfulness of contemporary buildings is likely influenced more by levels of architects’ theoretical colour knowledge and by their personal preferences rather than by contextual influences such as the cultural and physical context of a design, the building function, or client directives.     

Book Reviews

The first review is of a book that probably should be required reading for most personnel who participate in new product development—both academics and practitioners. It focuses on product innovation, primarily from an engineering perspective. Special emphasis is given to product design and development issues ranging from attribute specification and design for manufacturing to the economics and management of product development projects. Although the book has limitations, it provides highly relevant insights, especially for those involved with engineered products. The second review covers a book devoted to software development, which is becoming a ubiquitous ingredient in many products. Our reviewer reports that the book offers much practical wisdom. The third and fourth reviews discuss books for practitioners that are focused on specialized areas: biomedical and clinical instrumentation and food products. Although specialized, the first of these books offers some broader, more general lessons. The other will be of greatest value to those developing food products who have statistical training. The next three reviews cover other books of greatest interest to practitioners. The first is also most useful for those developing engineered products. The second will be of most use to less experienced personnel. The third book is about teamwork—now regarded by most practitioners as essential—but with only a few examples pertinent to product development. The last two reviews report on books that will be primarily of interest to academics and of limited interest to practitioners. The first of these two reviews describes a conference proceedings book, which is a compendium of unusually thoughtful presentations on the impact of changes in information technology on the design and execution of marketing actions. The articles in this collection are at once balanced in terms of level and style and comprehensive in terms of their overall coverage. The second covers a product management textbook with special emphasis on opportunity identification and the alignment of effort and resources with such opportunities.     

Representations in simulated workplaces

In vocational education students are to be prepared to participate in communities of practice. Hence they need technical skills as well as content knowledge e.g. science and mathematics. Research has shown that the instructional strategy of guided co-construction may lead to deeper understandings within a practice. The research questions in this article aim at finding out whether guided co-construction is an effective strategy in joining experience and general knowledge with representations as tools for communication and orientation. The present study is a qualitative analysis of a design-based research project. Our goal was to establish how the use of representations developed within a process of tandem tricycle construction. We looked for video data that could potentially explain how representations were used in practice and how such use was related to vocational and academic disciplines. Interesting differences could be revealed which were clearly related to differences in the way representations were designed and used in the whole cycle of problem solving (the construction of a technical object). At two of the four schools the representations remained visible and continued to be used until the end of the process. Designing and using representations as a core activity in vocational education could be the key to integrate theory in designing and constructing in the workshop.     

基于职业能力的纺粘法工艺设计

文章主要阐述了纺粘法工艺设计过程,项目采用16个大型综合工艺设计任务,每个小组1个大任务,在大型任务的基础上设立分阶段的任务,每个阶段任务再细化成小的学习任务.根据干燥目的,确定是否需要干燥设备,根据纺丝牵伸速度,确定需要干燥设备的类型,然后根据原料的热学性能确定干燥工艺参数.纺丝成网设计时先要根据产品性能要求选择合适...     

Does Regulation Trade Off Quality against Inequality? The Case of German Architects and Construction Engineers

We exploit an exogenous price increase of 10 per cent for architectural services to answer the question how price regulation affects income inequality and service quality. Using individual‐level data from the German microcensus for the years 2006–2012, we find a significant reform effect of 8 per cent on personal net income for self‐employed architects and construction engineers. This group moved from the second lowest to the highest quintile of the net income distribution. This increase in inequality is associated with a deterioration of service quality. The reform reduced average scores of a peer ranking for architects by 18 per cent.