Relationship learning at trade shows: Its antecedents and consequences

In spite of the increasingly recognized role of trade shows as a highly cost-effective medium, there are few established guidelines on how to capitalize on these meeting occasions. The relational view of competitive advantage, however, identifies relationship learning as an important avenue for creating differential advantage and supernormal profits in relationships. The purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical model explicating relationship-based learning activities growing out of trade shows, its determinants and performance effect. Specifically, it examines the roles of relationship properties of trade show participants, and collective inquiry approaches used for trade shows, in fostering learning between exhibitors and visitors. The model was tested by a sample of 414 exhibitor-visitor relationship dyads identified at specific trade shows. The direct effect of relationship commitment, consensus, and collective inquiry on relationship learning at trade shows was confirmed. The powerful influence of relationship learning activities on relationship performance outcomes as perceived by exhibitors at trade shows was substantiated.     

The impact of the biotechnology industry on local economic development in the Boston and San Diego metropolitan areas

High-technology/knowledge-intensive industries have become of increasing importance as sources of job growth and revenue to communities seeking to develop their economies. Communities want these industries so that they can be as economically vigorous as possible. However, although high-tech industries such as biotechnology are coveted as drivers of economic development, the local development impact of these clusters of regional innovation is not entirely positive. This is especially true with regard to the impact upon the low and semi-skilled populations. In some regions, the new growth generated by high-tech clusters has converted relatively inexpensive open space into haphazard commercial and industrial use that has contributed to sprawl, transportation congestion, lack of affordable housing, and gentrification. These problems are particularly evident in the Boston and San Diego metropolitan areas, which rank as the second and third largest U.S. biotechnology clusters respectively. This paper seeks to gauge the local economic development impact—especially with regard to the labor and real estate markets—of the biotechnology clusters in the San Diego and Boston metropolitan areas.     

Well beyond streaming video: IPv6 and the next generation television

The Internet has provided a plethora of commercial opportunities, the majority of them arising from advances in software and networking. As the technology evolves in an ever increasing pace, new opportunities are bound to be created. This paper examines how one of these technologies, the 6th version of the Internet Protocol, may affect the Internet and the opportunities associated with it, by looking at one specific emerging application: Internet Television (IPTv). In particular, the paper examines the possible impact and implications of multicasting on television broadcasts. Television and cable broadcasters have looked for ways to exploit the potential of narrowcast for a long time, but conventional narrowcast business models have been hampered by the geographic and technological limitations in reaching audiences big enough to be economically viable. The Internet, however, is naturally disposed toward one-to-one communications and high levels of interactivity thus providing a significant platform from which to broadcast.The television industry has been selected in order to highlight that emerging Internet technologies can significantly affect well-established industries and markets and create new opportunities when carefully exploited. More specifically by reducing entry barriers it can allow SMEs to enter markets that traditionally required large investments. The paper discusses the implications for policy makers and regulatory bodies, entrepreneurs wishing to start new channels, established television broadcasters and finally the viewers themselves.     

The R&D system for industrial development in Taiwan

The research and development (R&D) system for industrial development in Taiwan is made up of three parts: industrial firms, government-supported institutes (GSIs), and academic institutes and universities. The Taiwanese experience showed that the effective interaction of the GSIs and the industrial firms has successfully supported the development of its industry. The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) played the key role in industrial development during recent decades. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of ITRI and the way in which it fulfills its role through an examination of its major tasks. The implications for developing countries are also discussed.     

Order, positioning, scope and outcomes of market entry

This research aims to analyze the relationships between three dimensions of the market entry strategy for new products - order, positioning and scope - and four dimensions of performance - customer satisfaction, competitive position, costs and profitability. The consideration of internal links between the entry dimensions, together with their effect on the different performance variables, will enable us to determine the existence of mediating effects, which up until now have barely been examined in the literature. We test our model on a cross-sectional sample of 136 manufacturing firms, applying structural equation modeling based on the Partial Least Squares (PLS) methodology. Our findings reveal that all the three strategic decisions included in our model of market entry do affect performance, although their influence changes according to the performance dimension being measured.     

A functional approach for studying technological progress: Application to information technology

This paper develops and assesses a broad functional category approach to arriving at metrics for assessing technological progress. The approach is applied to three functional categories of information technology — storage, transportation and transformation by first building a 100 plus year database for each of the three functional categories. The results indicate generally continuous progress for each functional category independent of the specific underlying technological artifacts dominating at different times. Thus, the empirical results reported in this study indicate that the functional category approach offers a more stable and reliable methodology for assessing longer time technological progress trends. Therefore, this approach offers the promise of being more useful in technological forecasting for large-scale change even as its ability to forecast specific dominant technological trajectories has been compromised.     

The significance of trust and renqing in the long-term orientation of Chinese business-to-business relationships

While business relationships with China are receiving increased attention in both practitioner and academic discourse, very little empirical work however, has been undertaken to isolate and examine measures that focus on business-to-business relationships, and as such, research in this area is somewhat scant. In an attempt to bridge this gap, and add to the knowledge in this emerging discipline, the research aims to develop a conceptual framework to explore the relationship between trust and the long-term orientation in Chinese business-to-business market relationships. Based on a survey with Hong Kong companies that have a buyer-seller relationship with Chinese companies, the empirical findings indicate the mediating role and significance of ‘renqing’ for enhancing trust and contributing towards the long-term stability in relational exchange. The results highlight several implications for practicing managers to consider when aiming to establish and develop relationships in a Chinese business-to-business context.     

Brownian agent-based technology forecasting

Today's innovation process is best characterized by nonlinearity and interaction. Agent-based models build on these concepts, but have not been useful in practice because they are either too complex or too simple to make a good match with reality. As a remedy, we employ a Brownian agent model with intermediate complexity to produce value-added technology forecasting. As an illustration with Korea's software industry data, computer simulation is carried out. Attracted by higher technology value, agents concentrate on specific technology regions, and form co-existing major technology regions of high density. A rough comparison with actual software production data exhibits a fair reflection of reality, and supports the underlying idea that economic motivation of agents should be considered.     

The multi-channel challenge: A dynamic capability approach

The maturing of e-commerce, the diffusion of call centres into the B2B space and purchaser demands on price and service are leading to rapid change in the route to market in many B2B sectors, with shifting combinations of channels being offered to the customer in the search for advantage. In this situation managers can no longer rely on the channel resources that they have assembled to provide their extant competitive position. Instead they must be able to combine resources in new ways, gain additional resources and dispose of superfluous resources, and to do this repeatedly and rapidly if they are to compete successfully. The term ‘dynamic capabilities’ has emerged in the strategic management literature for these activities. Using four case studies and the analytic induction approach to data analysis, we identify seven dynamic capabilities for channel transformation.