Case study of Cr8tv, joint research betweeen European Commission, Lancaster University, Politecnico Milan,  Corvinus University, and Gothenburg Universit

This paper focus on learning about coevolution of a market orientation (MO) and industry evolution (IO) on the basis of a longitudinal case study of marketing orientation and new telecommunications technologies in the global telecommunications industry, and how the orientation and the technologies shaped and were shaped by developments within a Finnish telecommunications firm. It appears that when the industrial market evolved from closed to semi-open, MO took the form of actions to commercialize technological expertise, create new services, and to provide ways on how communicate strategic vision. MO is here defined as the coexistence and coevolution of customer orientation, competitor orientation, and inter-functional coordination. It is defined to be strong when it is proactive and explorative, weak when it is reactive and exploitative. When the industrial market studied in this paper opened up fully, MO transformed into actions focusing attention on the short term, controlling actions and cognition as to commercialize expertise or new services. In other words, the full opening up of an industrial market appears to weaken marketing orientation, while initial semi-opening appears to be more conducive to capabilities in R&D, cross-functional or cross-SBU collaboration, credibility of strategic vision, or bargaining power vis-à-vis vendors. Implications for further research are given.

Task 2.2.2: Developing a Typology of the Roles of Designer and Design Competence in Innovation

The purpose of this paper is to specify and develop a classifica­tion scheme of the roles of designers­­ in innovation, in particular to how they may contribute to business and economic growth and success. The purpose, in other words, is to make sense of such new concepts in the new and conflated field of innovation and design as “open innovation” and “co-designing” and of how to become an innovative and creative organization that is highly successful; whether talking about in-house designers, hiring design consultancies to work on product or service design or on organizational processes in commercial or public contexts

Despite a high interest, there has been a paucity of research that would have defined or specified on the basis of case-based evidence, for example, roles that designers and their competence can have as a force for innovation. Such definition is the objective of our research project, Creativity for Growth and Innovation in Europe (Cre8tv.EU), where we define these roles and create a typology for the roles designers and design competence have for innovation and how such design involvement can be harnessed for creating competitive advantage of firms.

Especially in the fast fashion segment of the global clothing industry, ill-fitting garments degenerate into waste as they return to store, are left unsold or unused, or otherwise outdate. To address these problems of ill-fit, we accessed from databanks the 3D morphological measurements of 478 French female consumers. We extracted virtual mannequins representative of three dominant bodylines types. Clinical evidence suggests that, among body lines for good fit between a particular consumer and a particular grade of garment, the neck and armholes are pivotal. Cross-tabulating across the above matrix of design requirements, our simulation reveals how virtual fitting for draping and ease allowance on a particular virtual mannequin improves fit and thus reduces garment waste. Given that 3D parametrization holds promise to improve sustainability in fast fashion, we call for clinical trials, as well as for replication or trials in other segments of the fashion industry, other products than garments, and/or other industries. 

There has been paucity of research in how industrial evolution and path dependence happen in a complex technological system. Historical analyses of technologies such as those related to automobiles provide evidence that once a dominant design is settled, there are increasing returns to industry- and market-wide adoption. Innovation and the creation of a (potential) path alone do not suffice. Against this background, this paper reports on findings from our analysis of a historical and embedded case study of the telecom industry and Sonera (a.k.a. Telecom Finland), 1980 to 2010. The paper concludes with four propositions, two of them strengthening earlier research and two other ones offering novel directions. These are: (1) also in a complex technological system, upon or directly after the occurrence of a discontinuity or discontinuities, complementary assets appear to provide limited competitive advantage for any company; (2) once a dominant design is in place, it homogenizes consumer and other customer preferences also in a complex technological system; (3) the homogenization increases possibilities for “hybridization”; that is, that co-existing and meeting of two or more earlier independent paths continue; and (4) at this “intersection”, there is, at least for a short moment, simultaneous path continuation and path creation. 

This review discusses how treatment of pediatric inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients has improved with attention to therapeutic quality and cost. The number of such patients in Western countries has increased rapidly. Similarly to what has been the trend in the management of adult IBD, the pediatric IBD therapy has become more active than earlier. High use of immunosuppressants has helped to control the extensive and aggressive course of pediatric IBD. Full disease control already at an early phase has advantages such as to preserve normal child growth and development, to maintain overall good health and quality of life, as well as to decrease the psychosocial burden of the disease. A key research direction is to develop the more active approach into a way to reduce healthcare costs by decreasing the so-far high rate of surgery of pediatric IBD patients. 

Mountain climbers call it “summit fever” when one or more individuals in a group of climbers become so enamored with the notion of reaching the summit of a mountain that they ignore less exciting issues such as how to safely descend the mountainside and live to tell one’s self and others about the experience. In this paper, we review decision-making literature on symmetric vs. asymmetric goal formation, as well as innocuous and fallacious learning. We develop a process theory of summit fever by defining that summit fever is when fallacious learning in chase of an asymmetric goal disproportionately narrows attention to a peak milestone. A halfway milestone that represents a peak experience then is prone to lead to goal conflation so that the way forward is compromised at the expense of reaching the ultimate goal. We illustrate the emerging framework by revisiting how and how summit fever led to a mountaineering accident on K2 in 2008 whereby 11 out of 26 climbers involved died. Our conclusions include implications for further research.

The starting points of this paper are twofold. Firstly, computer game design can be taken as an art form (Crawford 1982). Seconly, and building on the first point, computer games can be taken as a model of organising whereby there are multiple dimensions or levels of analysis (Burger-Helmchen & Cohendet 2011). In and across the starting points, this paper unfolds a set of findings and generates a set propositions. The propositions include that new forms of art such as computer games have been and will be much like old forms of art. More specifically, the proposition here is that each new particular form of art, as well as art generally, needs to be invented in order to exist (Shiner 2001). In order to persist and not only to exist for a short instance, one or another kind of a process organizing needs to happen. Such a process can unfold following a a grand design. The process of organizing can be dictated by chance or be a result of drift. Or, the process can emerge in a series of small steps. In the latter instance, hybridization or a combination, even recombination, can be the way of the happening.