Open Innovation of James Watt and Steve Jobs: Insights for Sustainability of Economic Growth

Analysis of the Effect of R&D Planning Support for SMEs Using Latent Growth Modeling

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Korea play a pivotal role in the national economy. However, due to scale limitations, the resources available to SMEs for innovation activities are limited. Therefore, as a means to compensate for the market failure of SMEs, which can be caused by resource limitations, and to ensure sustainable growth, the government supports the SMEs for innovation activities. Korea has fulfilled SME R&D planning support projects since 2002 to efficiently support SMEs’ technology commercialization activities through systematic support in the early stages of the technology commercialization cycle. In order to analyze the effectiveness of SME R&D planning support program, this study conducted latent growth modeling analysis using financial data of three years of SMEs participating in the program. According to the analysis results, SMEs receiving R&D planning support funds have an increase in sales compared to those that do not. In particular, it was analyzed that the sales increase effect of companies supported by R&D funds continuously appeared more clearly. The result of this analysis is that policy support for SMEs can help technological innovation activities necessary for R&D planning, which is an early stage of SME technological innovation. This study is meaningful in that it quantitatively analyzes using latent growth model and the contribution of government support at the R&D planning stage to SMEs’ innovation capabilities and their contribution to performance. However, it has a limitation that it does not address the specific impact path of the planning stage support on innovation capacity and innovation performance.

Trendsetting, Cultural Awareness, Cultural Receptivity, and Future Orientation among the Young Generation of Chinese College Students: Trendsetters Critically Matter

Current Chinese college students will become future consumers and fashion leaders. We examined, relying on a survey of 572 Chinese college students, which college students are trendsetters and followers. MANOVA results found four different innovation groups from trendsetters, to early adopters, to late adopters, and to reluctant adopters. ANOVA and regression results also found significant differences in cultural receptivity, cultural awareness, and future orientation between trendsetters and followers. The regression with the quadratic forms illustrated that the impact of trendsetting is not linear and becomes much larger for trendsetters but is almost none for the three follower groups. The piecewise regression revealed that the slope of the followers is flat, implying no relationship between the followers and cultural receptivity, awareness, and future orientation. However, the slope of the trendsetters is steep, implying a strong positive relationship between trendsetters and cultural attitudes such as cultural receptivity, cultural awareness, and future orientation.

Dynamics of Cooperation in Minority Games in Alliance Networks

Alliance networks are the underlying structures of social systems in business, management, and society. The sustainability and dynamics of a social system rely on the structural evolutions of the topologies. Understanding the evolution sheds light on the dynamics and sustainability of a social system. Minority game models have been successfully applied across social science, economy, management, and engineering. They provide simple yet applicable modeling to articulate the evolutionary cooperation dynamics of competitive players in binary decision situations. By extending the minority games played in alliance networks, the cooperation in structured systems of different network topologies is analyzed. In this model, local and global score strategies are considered with and without cooperation rewiring options. The cooperation level, the score, and the topological properties are investigated. The research uses a numerical simulation approach on random networks, scale-free networks, and small-world networks. The results suggest that the network rewiring strategy leads to higher systemic performance with a higher score and a higher level of stability in decision-making. Competitive decision-making can lead to a higher level of cooperation from a poor initial start. However, stubbornness in decision-making can lead to a poor situation when cooperation is discouraged. Players with local or global information adopt local and global score strategies. The results show that local strategies might lead to imbalance, while a global strategy might achieve a relatively stable outcome. This work contributes to bridge minority games in structured networks to study the cooperation between formation and evolution, and calls for future minority game modeling on social networks.

On Technology in Innovation Systems and Innovation-Ecosystem Perspectives: A Cross-Linking Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the role of technology as it has been framed within Innovation System (IS) and Innovation Ecosystem (IE) literature research streams. The methodological choice is a systemic review that allows to focus on theoretical proposals by scholars and the identification of the commonalities regarding the pivotal role of technology and the differences in describing innovation-based mechanisms in both literatures. Results show that the key elements are the overall idea of technology as pivotal in driving innovation, the actors affecting technology and contributing to reach innovation-based goals, and the decisional process emerging because of technology. Furthermore, emerging features on evolution through time and knowledge-transforming mechanisms favored by technology in IE show an opportunity to learn in-depth from specific insights generated in both the literatures and to delineate a more comprehensive approach to technology related to innovation in wider interconnected contexts.

Platform Adoption Factors in the Internet Industry

This study examines the factors influencing the choices of Internet platform services by applying the technology acceptance model. For this purpose, the analysis is conducted with 222 people who use different types of Internet platforms by utilizing structural equation modeling. The results show that perceived usefulness had positive effects on the intention to use, perceived ease of use, diversity, and security risks affected by the perceived usefulness, and the indirect influences on the intention to use. In addition, satisfaction (in relation to service quality) was found to affect both perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. This research is significant because it will make it possible to predict users’ perceptions of Internet platforms, which is important for establishing relevant strategies.

The Role of Manufacturing in Sustainable Economic Development: A Case of Guangzhou, China

Economic development is the natural requirement of urban sustainability. Faced with uncertainty in society, including economic crisis and risk, the ability to reduce the stress and increase the security of economic life should be considered. World cities, deeply impacted by globalization and urbanization, deserve more attention with respect to the economic dimension of sustainable development. This study explored the role of manufacturing in the sustainable economic development of world cities, based on research in Guangzhou, China. This paper applies the grounded theory method, whereas data collection was performed through in-depth semi-structured interviews and field observations. This research found industrial interactions between manufacturing and a variety of relevant advanced producer services facilitate industrial upgrading and diversity, which exert positive effects on the city’s economic dimension of sustainable development.