J. Open Innov. Technol. Mark. Complex., Volume 3, Issue 4 (December 2017) – 8 articles

In order to counter something to the most thrilling challenges of mankind at the beginning of the twenty-first century, production and consumption systems need to transform towards sustainability. We argue that the knowledge-based bioeconomy and digitalization are two promising technological approaches which require to be thought together in order to contribute to the transformation and to trigger the required technological dynamics. However, such a broad transformative process requires a participation of all societal stakeholders. Innovation systems in principle offer a framework for policy designs supporting the transformation, but they need to be extended to include the direction towards overcoming the lock-in in oil-based economic activities and mass consumption. For this purpose, we introduce the idea of a Dedicated Innovation System, which takes care of potential inertia due to the interest of established (oil-based) industries and consider the economic opportunities raised by social and responsible innovation. The transformation process will likely compensate for decreasing jobs in traditional sectors, which are increasingly replaced by robotics and artificial intelligence. The knowledge-based digital bioeconomy is likely to generate the emergence of new sectors with new employment opportunities, e.g. in periphery regions or in the emerging sharing-economy sector. Full article

This paper analyses cost aggregation in a supply chain. It provides a literature overview on the key concepts of cost aggregation, multimodal transport, logistic chain and maritime transport. The focuses on the value adding process with logistics data and assesses the costs accumulation during the transport process. The paper also reveals multimodal impacts on the logistics costs. The research data is obtained from the costing system of a large export company. The company exports round 90% of its production and mostly to the European markets. The research data contains a sample of 929 invoiced orders to the largest market of the mill. The research results indicate empirical evidence of the cost-function properties. This type of an approach is rare in logistics literature as these detailed data sets are highly difficult to obtain. The article concludes by addressing future research task and directions. Full article

The continued relevance of the systems approach to the study of innovation, especially in developed countries, has been the subject of recent discourses. This paper argues that with respect to developing countries, discussions on innovation systems are yet to be exhausted. Against this background, the paper takes an objective look at the innovation systems approach and suggests an agenda for studying innovation systems in developing countries. The position of the paper is that modifications to the innovation systems approach present viable opportunities for understanding the innovation process in the developing world. Some concrete modifications, and their implications for future research, are proposed. Full article

The world economy has been confronting low economic growth for several years. Many experts agree that concepts such as openness, convergence, and creation of new market demand through new emerging technologies (e.g. Internet of Things, big data, and Artificial Intelligence) may solve the current economic crisis throughout the world. When these concepts are linked to a network, the law of increasing returns will come true. As the issue of the 4th industrial revolution mentioned in the 2016 World Economic Forum is similar, the enlargement of open innovation and convergence will lead to a new dynamic economy and sustainable development. Full article

In a last few decades, innovation research scholars proposed several new concepts, one after another, but independently, and in a chronological sequence: technology fusion; digital convergence; disruptive technology; open innovation; and IoT (Internet of Things). Each concept has its own explaining power for a certain innovation at a certain time period, but has obvious limitations. A basic question is, therefore, whether each of those proposed concepts is independent among them or inter-related dynamically, i.e. in what sequences? In order to answer this question, a specific industrial product, i.e. machine tools, is selected for our study. Although the machine tool is described as the mother machine, i.e. the machine of all the machinery, this industry experienced a drastic technological shift toward NC (numerically controlled) revolution around 1975. However, up until now, this industry continues to be a pivotal industry in modern and high-tech industrial era. By reviewing the technological history of the Japanese machine tool industry from 1975 to 2015, we observed several technological shifts even after the NC revolution, each of which can be explained with one of those concepts proposed in the last decades. We find a dynamic interrelationship among those concepts in the following sequence with the publication dates in parenthesis: disruptive technology (1997), technology fusion (1992), open innovation (2003), digital convergence (1996). We describe characteristics and analytical framework for IoT innovation that has gone beyond the traditional Schumpeterian formulation of innovation. Full article

The purposes of the study are to estimate inbound tourism demand and to analyze the effect of the Korean Wave and Economic indicators on it. For these purposes, we examined the influence of Korean Wave, GDP, CPI and exchange rate on inbound tourism demand for foreign tourists from the USA, China, Japan and Hong Kong to Korea. In order to measure the Korean wave, the export amount of Hallyu related contents exported to each of the four countries is used. GDP means the GDP of each of the four countries. However, the CPI and the exchange rate are relative to Korea. Penal data on tourism demand, Korean Wave, and Economic indicators from 1997 to 2014 are collected for analysis. Through the various tests for panel analysis model selection, the best fit model proved to be a random effect model. As a result, Korean Wave, GDP, and exchange rate have a statistically significant impact on tourism demand. Therefore, it can be seen that the Korean Wave is one of the important factors for attracting foreign tourists to Korea in four countries. Also, the results show that overseas tourism increases when the economic income of the country is high and the exchange rate is favorable. However, CPI does not appear to have a statistically significant impact on tourism demand. This indicates that tourists are not overly concerned about the cost of the travel country when planning a trip. Full article

Innovation based growth and development is a hot topic in all economies of the world. Openness of mind, openness of businesses and openness of innovation are the key characteristics and success factors of the global world today. Growth and development strategies are becoming smarter transforming economy towards creation of higher added-value products, services and more effective use of resources. Such a high-priority aim may be achieved by R&D activities, which raise the innovation growth and, positively influence productivity, thus providing a platform for sustainable growth and development. Productivity is perceived as the ability to properly use the production factors to create value-added, implement innovations and to maintain the country’s competitiveness. In the macroeconomic researches of different scholars (Solow, Saliola, Seker, Kathuria, Puharts etc.) special attention is given to the quantitative measurement of the various factors of growth and development. These researches have shown that one of the more accurate methods of the productivity measurement is a calculation of total factor productivity (TFP). TFP notion is closely related to the innovation concept as proved by many empirical researches. Industry and firm-level studies concluded that R&D investments to a great extent determine TFP growth. The aim of this research is to calculate the total factor productivity by industry both in Latvia and Lithuania for better understanding of economic growth and development perspectives in those countries. Full article

Today’s digital era challenges organisations not only to follow the technological trajectories, by developing new technological solutions and/or adopting the latest disruptive technology, but most importantly to become creative and resilient organic systems that are open to changes and keen to experiment and innovate continuously. For this reason, organisations need to shape a creative environment in which technology and creativity are fully integrated and intertwined. This can be achieved by integrating the emotional and aesthetic aspects of an organisation with the technical and rational dimensions distinguishing the technology. This paper argues that, in the context of the so labelled fourth industrial revolution, successful organisations are those that exert innovative capability by becoming techno-human systems developing and melting emotional and rational knowledge. In accordance with this view, managers alongside the deployment of innovative technologies – which defines the techno-based dimensions of an organisation – they have to nurture an organisational creative environment which reflects and empowers the human-based characteristics. This can be achieved by taking into account the aesthetic dimensions and properties of an organisation and by bringing artistic projects and/or attitudes into the organisation in order to trigger critical and creative thinking. The instrumental use of the arts as a management innovation for the creation of an organisational context which nurtures human potential and creative thinking is illustrated through the analysis of some of the key arts based initiatives put in place by Elica, an Italian world leader company in the design and production of kitchen hoods. Full article