Leveraging on systemic learning to manage the early phases of product innovation projects

A number of studies have pointed out the importance of the early phases of new product development projects. In fact, these phases (addressed in the literature with different names, such as pre-project activities, concept generation, product planning, idea generation, investigation, product definition) are concerned with a number of critical decisions that have great impact on the performance of product development. Any fault occurring in these early phases in understanding the market needs, in choosing the product architecture and technology and in defining the product specifications would eventually deteriorate the innovation process, since adjustments in later stages imply reworks that are costly and time consuming. Although the relevance of early project phases has been empirically verified in the literature, the mechanisms that allow these phases to be properly managed are still largely unexplored. This paper investigates the articulated and coherent set of methods, organizational mechanisms and behavioural patterns that successful companies adopt to manage concept generation and product planning. Inferences are based on a field research concerning 19 in-depth case studies of Italian and Swedish companies in the vehicles, helicopters and white goods industries. The paper supports findings of other studies concerning the importance of teamworking and communication. However, teamworking emerges as a necessary, but not a sufficient mechanism. Systemic learning from past experiences is the real keystone toward an effective management of the early phases of product development processes.     

THE EFFECT OF VOLUNTARY CORPORATE LIQUIDATION ON SHAREHOLDER WEALTH

This paper presents an analysis of the shareholder wealth effect of voluntary corporate liquidation, the extreme form of corporate divestiture classified as a “selloff.” For a sample of 37 firms that liquidated during the 1970–1982 period, the liquidation announcement is associated with statistically and economically significant stock price increases.     

Tax-induced Dissimilarities Between Domestic and Foreign Mutual Funds in Italy

Using data from Italy over the period 1998–2002, this study investigates whether tax effects can account for differences in return patterns between domestic and foreign mutual funds, and if this dissimilarity translates into performance. The paper presents evidence that much of the difference between domestic and foreign funds is explained by the different tax systems. The asymmetry between the two groups, due to the fact that domestic funds are obliged to pay taxes on a daily basis while foreign funds are taxed when capital gains are collected, also affects performance. We prove that comparing pre-tax returns, Italian funds are virtually indistinguishable from their foreign counterparts in terms of risk-adjusted returns, while when comparing after-tax returns, foreign funds outperform.     

Elicitation of Expert Opinion in Benefit Transfer of Environmental Goods

Benefit transfer is a method for estimating the value of environmental goods that involves the use of past information on identical or similar goods. This paper considers the extent to which benefit transfer can be based on prior distributions elicited from expert opinion. We propose two alternative methods to elicit the parameters of a prior distribution from experts on environmental valuation. An experiment is carried out on the value of National Parks in Spain. The results from the elicited distributions are compared with the information provided by onsite samples of visitors. The results indicate that individual experts made different predictions about the potential value of the policy areas that were diverse and unable to accurately predict the value for each policy site. However, the average across the elicited distributions approaches the estimated distribution with empirical data and accurately predicts the relative values for the two policy sites considered.     

Trade and agricultural development in the 1980s and the challenges for the 1990s: Latin America

Trends in agricultural trade for South and Central America are documented and the reform process is discussed. Performance of the agricultural sector of the region is evaluated. Challenges for policy makers are reviewed, ranging from macroeconomic policy to science and technology.     

Brazilian children and the economic crisis: Evidence from the State of São Paulo

This paper briefly reviews the socio-economic conditions and the situation of children in Brazil during 1960–1980, drawing on data for the country as a whole and concentrating on the policies of the 1964–1973 years. It also examines more recent developments that led to the current crisis as well as its overall social impact on employment, food consumption and prices, and government social expenditures. The possible effects of the crisis on the welfare of children in the State of São Paulo are examined in detail. Finally, the paper reviews the government policy for protecting the poor and vulnerable in general and children in particular.     

Psychological Meaning of Products and Product Positioning

New product positioning is an issue increasingly being considered by new products managers. An article on this topic by Crawford appeared in this Journal in 1985. Roberto Friedmann and Parker Lessig employ the concept of psychological meaning of products to discuss why and how Crawford's new product positioning typology affects the consumer. They present arguments to show that the psychological meaning of products and Crawford's typology address product positioning from complementary and converging perspectives. They also argue that psychological meaning of products can be a valuable managerial planning tool.     

Outside and inside the regression “black box” from exploratory to interior data analysis

Good data analysis consists of three phases: (1) preliminary analysis, (2) confirmatory analysis (model testing), and (3) interior analysis (model checking). Social scientists doing quantitative research usually concentrate on only one of the three: confirmatory analysis. I argue that there is much to be learned from careful preliminary and interior analyses. I present an extensive example of data analysis for each of the three phases using the same data set in each phase. Rather than surveying all the possible tools available in each phase of data analysis, I concentrate on Exploratory Data Analysis techniques (stem-and-leaf plot, letter-value display, box plot, and power transformations) for the preliminary phase, on OLS for the confirmatory phase, and on residuals, leverage and single-case influence measures for interior analysis.     

Sectoral shifts, diversification and regional unemployment: evidence from local labour systems in Italy

Using Local Labour Systems (LLSs) data, this work aims at assessing the effects of sectoral shifts and industry specialization patterns on regional unemployment in Italy over the years 2004–2008. Italy represents an interesting case study because of the high degree of spatial heterogeneity in local labour market performance and the well-known North–South divide. Furthermore, the presence of strongly specialized LLSs (Industrial Districts, IDs) allows us to test whether IDs perform better than highly diversified urban areas thanks to the effect of agglomeration economies, or viceversa. Building on a semiparametric spatial auto-regressive framework, our empirical investigation documents that sectoral shifts and the degree of specialization exert a negative role on unemployment dynamics. By contrast, highly diversified areas turn out to be characterized by better labour market performances.     

Schumpeterian patterns of innovation and the sources of breakthrough inventions: evidence from a data-set of R&D awards

This paper examines the relationship between Schumpeterian patterns of innovation and the generation of breakthrough inventions. Our data source for breakthrough inventions is the “R&D 100 awards” competition organized each year by the magazine Research & Development. Since 1963, this magazine has been awarding this prize to 100 most technologically significant new products available for sale or licensing in the year preceding the judgment. We use USPTO patent data to measure the relevant dimensions of the technological regime prevailing in each sector and, on this basis, we provide a characterization of each sector in terms of the Schumpeter Mark I/Schumpeter Mark II archetypes. Our main finding is that breakthrough inventions are more likely to emerge in ‘turbulent’ Schumpeter Mark I type of contexts.