Differential Effects of the Primary Forms of Cross Functional Integration on Product Development Cycle Time

In markets characterized by high rates of technological and market change product life cycles tend to be shorter, resulting in the increased importance of competing on the basis of product development cycle time. For firms operating in these dynamic market environments, competing on the basis of cycle time may not only be a source of competitive advantage, but in some industries may actually be essential for survival.
In this investigation the relative importance of five forms of cross functional integration and R&D integration of information or knowledge from past projects were explored in terms of their effects on product development cycle time. The five forms of cross functional integration included R&D/marketing integration, R&D/customer integration, R&D/manufacturing integration, R&D/supplier integration, and strategic partnerships. A sample of 65 U.S. and Scandinavian high technology firms (or strategic business units) were studied. The sample included firms from the computer, telecommunications, instruments, specialty chemicals, biotechnology, and software industries.
The results demonstrated that R&D integration of knowledge from past projects explained the largest degree of variation in product development cycle time. R&D/marketing integration and R&D/customer integration explained the next largest degree of variation in cycle time reduction. Cross cultural generalizability tests demonstrated that the results were generalizable across the U.S. and Scandinavian samples of firms. In addition, the results were found to be generalizable across industry or product category for five of the six forms of integration.     

Leseliste Top 5: Controlling &; Kreativität

Praxis / MagazinTitelthema

Leseliste Top 5: Controlling &; Kreativit?t     

The stability of big-five personality traits

We demonstrate that Big-Five personality traits are stable for working-age adults over a four-year period. Mean population changes are small and constant across age groups. Intra-individual changes are generally unrelated to adverse life events and are not economically meaningful.     

Ethanol Production, Food and Forests

This paper investigates the direct and indirect impacts of ethanol production on land use, deforestation and food production. A partial equilibrium model of a national economy with two sectors and two regions, one of which includes a forest, is developed. It analyses how an exogenous increase in the ethanol price affects input allocation (land and labor) between sectors (energy crop and food). The total effect of ethanol prices on food production and deforestation is decomposed into three partial effects. First, the well-documented effect of direct land competition between rival uses arises; it increases deforestation and decreases food production. Second, an indirect displacement of food production across regions, possibly provoked by the reaction of international food prices, increases deforestation and reduces the food sector’s output. Finally, labor mobility between sectors and regions tends to decrease food production but also deforestation. The total impact of ethanol production on food production is negative while there is an ambiguous impact on deforestation.     

Bridging the gap between technological possibilities and people:: Involving people in the early phases of technology development

Technology provides endless promising possibilities to support people's lives. In reality, it is not a matter of what is possible, but rather a matter of how and when technology will be integrated, accepted and adopted by people. However, conventionally within organizations the areas of technology development and market research are not closely related nor applied in the process of innovation and do not always share the same scope. In that sense there is a gap between the potential of technology and humankind's preferences.This paper discusses the current areas of technology development and market research in a business environment and proposes an integrated approach to bridge the gap between technology and people, in which people, rather than market sizes become central in the development of technology. In addition, it also describes how this approach of people-driven innovation is brought into practice through the development of early experience demonstrators. The core focus of this paper is on the processes and practices regarding innovation within an organization, rather than the adoption of innovation by users or the rate of the adoption of a marketed solution (Rogers, 1995 [E.M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, The Free Press, New York, 1995. [1]]).     

Comparing Conventional and New Policy Approaches for Carnivore Conservation: Theoretical Results and Application to Tiger Conservation

New policy approaches to facilitate the co-existence of wildlife and livestock are needed for situations where predation incidents greatly impact households’ income and retaliatory killing threatens endangered carnivore species’ survival. In this paper, models are developed to assess how two alternative policy approaches impact a herder’s decisions on carnivore hunting and livestock protection. We find that while the well-established ex-post compensation policy induces suboptimal livestock protection it can generate sufficient incentives for the herder to refrain from hunting so that the carnivore population reaches its socially optimal level. Performance payments are proposed as alternative policy. They are found not to distort livestock protection incentives and can also help achieve a socially optimal carnivore population level. Which of the two scheme types gives rise to less cost is ambiguous. An empirical analysis of the model with data from tiger-livestock conflicts in India is presented.     

Search for good policies in a single-warehouse, multi-retailer system by particle swarm optimisation

An optimal control of sufficiently realistic single-warehouse, multi-retailer systems (SWMR-systems) requires the simulation optimisation approach. After a brief discussion of modelling and simulation aspects for such systems, we present a simulator providing a sufficiently large set of options to customize it to realistic problem situations. The paper then focuses on the applicability of optimisation algorithms and introduces the methods particle swarm optimisation and threshold accepting. We show that both approaches yield good optimisation results for several examples of a 5-retailer system investigated according to their reordering strategy and transportation resources.     

Measuring the effects of geographical distance on stock market correlation

Recent studies suggest that the correlation of stock returns increases with decreasing geographical distance. However, there is some debate on the appropriate methodology for measuring the effects of distance on correlation. We modify a regression approach suggested in the literature and complement it with an approach from spatial statistics, the mark correlation function. For the stocks contained in the S&P 500 that we examine, both approaches lead to similar results. Contrary to previous studies we find that beyond 50 miles geographical proximity is irrelevant for stock return correlations. For distances below 50 miles, we can show that the magnitude of local correlations varies with investor sentiment.