J. Open Innov. Technol. Mark. Complex., Volume 6, Issue 1 (March 2020) – 21 articles

This article aims to minimize cycle time for a simple assembly line balancing problem type 2 by presenting a variable neighborhood strategy adaptive search method (VaNSAS) in a case study of the garment industry considering the number and types of machines used in each workstation in a simple assembly line balancing problem type 2 (SALBP-2M). The variable neighborhood strategy adaptive search method (VaNSAS) is a new method that includes five main steps, which are (1) generate a set of tracks, (2) make all tracks operate in a specified black box, (3)operate the black box, (4) update the track, and (5) repeat the second to fourth steps until the termination condition is met. The proposed methods have been tested with two groups of test instances, which are datasets of (1) SALBP-2 and (2) SALBP-2M. The computational results show that the proposed methods outperform the best existing solution found by the LINGO modeling program. Therefore, the VaNSAS method provides a better solution and features a much lower computational time. Full article

New product development is an important innovation that should be done to meet consumers’ new trends. This paper is prominent as it discusses new product development through the inactive problem perspective in SMEs in Indonesia as a way to explore customers’ expectations, which are often challenging to analyze. The capability to develop a new product based on the inactive problem perspective allows SMEs to become pioneers that possess various competitive advantages, including strong brand awareness. This study included 14 samples of SMEs to represent the characteristics of SMEs in Indonesia between 2016 and 2018. We used the particle swarm optimization approach for the decision making of several SME parameters with the profit maximization function. This paper is the first paper to discuss the relationship between the cost of ideas and production costs in the types of SMEs with an inactive problem perspective in Indonesia to obtain maximum profits by considering various factors that affect the costs and revenue of SMEs. This paper also analyzes the cost used for an idea realization to get maximum profit. This study shows that differences were found in each type of SME, and these difference were related to the amount of funds that were used to explore, realize, and make a profit out of a specific idea. Full article

This study is intended to determine the effects of system management on value creation and global growth in born startups. To achieve this, a survey was empirically carried out on 300 owners in born startups with less than five years’ experience. The findings are as follows. First, entrepreneurship, operation system, and support system as sub-variables of system management have a positive effect on value creation. Second, entrepreneurship and operating system have no significant effect on global growth, but the support system has a significant effect on global growth. Third, value creation has no significant mediating effect on global growth, which means that owners’ entrepreneurship can boost value creation as a corporate systematic operation when they have globally-oriented thinking, relationships through global network organization, the expertise of business, and some level of capital. In particular, their capability and expertise can be drivers to enter early global growth companies through value creation. Consequently, for the early value creation and global growth of born startups, they should recognize that system operation and value creation-oriented corporate global experience, due to their entrepreneurship as international companies under global market orientation, are key variables affecting a global born startup, and thus reflect them in management. Full article

This paper aims to explore and to illustrate success factors of reciprocal synergies of digital transformation-based merger and acquisition (M&A) deals in the grocery retail industry. The author carried out a case study on the merger of Ahold Delhaize in 2016. The paper’s contribution is a conceptual model of research that helps in pre-acquisition analysis on competence-based synergies in M&A to value strategic synergies as market value added a using real options application. By combining qualitative and quantitative research methods, the author provides empirical evidence to indicate the validity and value of the proposed research framework for both scholars and practitioners alike. Full article

The continuously occurring problems of forest depletion have resulted in the deforestation of countries and climate change. In order to resolve this problem, the development of innovative wood substitutes is essential. This research strives to develop a model for innovative wood substitutes for the sustainable growth of the Thai wood substitution industry. Qualitative and quantitative studies were employed to collect data through interviews and questionnaires. The subjects in this study included 500 entrepreneurs from the timber, lumber, and wood substitution industries. The results showed that the model for innovative wood substitutes for the sustainable growth of the Thai wood substitution industry consists of four main components, i.e., (1) customer orientation; (2) innovation and technology; (3) research and development; and (4) resources. The focus group results revealed that the developed structural equation model simulation passed the criteria of the data model fit evaluation with a chi-squared probability level (p) of 0.274, CMIN/DF = 1.071, goodness of fit index (GFI) = 0.969, and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.012. Full article

This paper attempts to fill a research gap of literature by constructing the dynamic model into which both ex ante and ex post patent value indicators are incorporated. A patent renewal model is tested using a large set of Pharmaceutical patents granted by the European Patent Office between 1996 and 2009. We test five ex ante indicators and single ex post indicator including family size, patent backward citations, backward references to non-patent literature, number of claims, number of inventors, renewal fee, patent age, application year, and the ex post indicator forward citations. Empirical findings show that three citation related indicators, family size, and the number of claims are positively associated with patent values, while the number of inventors, renewal fee, patent age, and application year are negatively correlated. In addition, forward citations seem to have persistent learning effects on patent values. Full article

This paper contributes to the open innovation literature by presenting a successful application of the open innovation approach in the maritime sector between Fincantieri (FC), one of the world’s largest shipbuilding groups, and the National Research Council of Italy (CNR, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), the largest research entity in Italy. By using external sources of scientific innovation, specifically 10 different groups of researchers from CNR research institutes and three universities, and by integrating these groups with a team of expert Fincantieri’s designers, the company obtained significant advances in terms of technological content and competitiveness. This collaboration is an evident example of successful implementation of the open innovation paradigm, where a big company (Fincantieri) uses external sources of innovation (the CNR researchers) to advance its technology by carrying out six different projects simultaneously. The paper presents the adopted open innovation model, the governance approach specifically implemented by the company and the major scientific contents and outcomes of the constellation of the six connected projects. Full article

Multimarket contact (MMC) refers to the situation in which more than two firms simultaneously compete with each other in multiple products and/or geographical markets. Most studies on MMC have explored how the market overlap creates “mutual forbearance”, which lessens the intensity of rivalry. While prior studies have mainly focused on how reduced rivalry from MMC influences market-related decisions, only a few have paid attention to its impact on innovation activities. The purpose of this research is to explore how multimarket competition influences different stages of innovation. Specifically, we focus on three stages of innovation: Content development, commercialization, and protection of IPs (Intellectual Property). This study is conducted as an exploratory case research based on the in-depth analysis of two leading Korean Mobile game companies. Based on our findings, we explain how mutual forbearance and observability of the rival’s competitive action influence the choice of strategic decisions across different stages of innovation. Full article

Global warming is causing a major ice retreat from the North Pole. From now on, this retreat allows almost permanent movement between East and West off the coast of the Russian Federation along the Northern Sea Route (NSR). For a long time, navigators have been trying to use this route which significantly reduced the distance between continents. The amount of freight that currently travels on the NSR will inevitably increase in the coming years. To reduce environmental risks, one possible option is not to supply ships with heavy fuel oil. The ships could then be electrically powered and navigate in stages from one port to another along the route to refuel for energy. This electrical energy can be produced on site from renewable energy sources. In this article, a first feasibility analysis is outlined, taking into account the tonnage constraints for navigating on a possible route for the NSR, the cost of energy production and the possible location of several ports of call. Under current economic conditions, the solution would not be profitable as it stands, but should become so at a later stage, which justifies starting to think about a future full electrification of navigation on the NSR, which will also contribute to the economic development of the Russian Federation northernmost regions. Full article

In the paper, the author takes stock of the conceptual reflection and empirical studies described in the current scientific literature on responsible innovation in the context of the emergence of the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) concept. RRI has been promoted in the European Union as a part of the Europe 2020 strategy with the objective of making research and innovation more sustainable and inclusive. As more than half of the EU’s firms declare they are conducting innovation activities, RRI problems are more relevant than ever. There remain many open questions, unresolved dilemmas and empirical white spots that call for more research in this field. This paper’s focus is the problem of RRI acceptance as a global framework for responsible innovation and the scarcity of suitable instruments that may help industries understand and adopt this concept. The main contributions of this paper include critical analysis of the RRI concept and its implications for industry, proposing a concept of an RRI index for innovating enterprises. Full article

This paper aims to solve the location and routing problem (LRP) in the agricultural sector with the objective function of fuel cost minimization. Many farmers may have problems when transporting and selling products because of high costs and unfair prices. The proper location of standardized procurement centers and suitable routes will relieve farmers’ problems. This paper includes a realistic constraint that a farm can be visited to collect product more than once. A mathematical model was formulated to be solved by Lingo software, but when the problem size was larger, Lingo was unable to solve the problem within a reasonable processing time. The variable neighborhood strategy adaptive search (VaNSAS) is proposed to solve this LRP. The main contributions of this paper are a real case study problem and the first introduction of VaNSAS. Furthermore, the different combinations of the solution approach are proposed to prove which combination is the best algorithm. The computational results show that VaNSAS can find the solutions for all problem sizes in much less processing time compared to Lingo. In medium and large-sized instances, the VaNSAS can reduce processing times by 99.91% and 99.86%, respectively, from solutions obtained by Lingo. Finally, the proposed VaNSAS has been deployed in a case study problem to decide the best locations and transportation routes with the lowest fuel cost. Full article

This study uses the lens of competitive dynamics to examine the coopetition process, which combines both cooperation and competition, employed by Qualcomm within the SoC (System on a Chip) design market related to smart devices. Qualcomm succeeded in developing the first SoC, which integrated GPS (Global Positioning System) and other software, and during the process of developing mobile chips has simultaneously cooperated and competed with competitors. In particular, Samsung, which began as a customer of the firm, has since become its competitor. By conducting descriptive case analysis, this study shows a coopetition process in the SoC industry and supplemented a coopetition study with the actual exemplary coopetition case. Full article

To promote efficient use of electrical energy, technology-based solutions, along with their corresponding user acceptance assessments, have been seen to facilitate goal fulfillment concerning desired functionality and expected benefits, in an open innovation fashion. This paper simultaneously develops an electrical energy consumption monitoring system (EECMS) device that shall monitor and control the use of energy in real-time and assesses its acceptability to users according to the extended technology acceptance model (TAM) approach. This proposed EECMS device is tested in an academic institution in the Philippines, and it is found that the device can function as desired as well as render a significant favor from its users according to additional key constructs. As such, future developments of the device are encouraged to enhance key constructs identified as suitable for future adoption. Full article

Businesses grounded upon multisided platforms (MSPs) are found in a growing number of industries, thanks to the recent developments in Internet and digital technologies. Digital MSPs enable multiple interactions among users of different sides through information and communication technologies. The understanding of the characteristics and constituents of MSPs is fragmented along different literature streams. Moreover, very few empirical studies have been carried out to date. In order to fill this gap, this paper presents a three-level framework that describes a digital MSP. The proposed framework is based on literature analysis and multiple case study. On the one hand, the framework can be used to describe MSP as it provides an operationalization of the concept through the identification of specific dimensions, variables and items; on the other hand, it can be used as an assessment tool by practitioners, as exemplified by the three empirical applications presented in this paper. Full article

The evaluation of social enterprises has been criticized for not being able to reflect the positive social aspects of the company through the financial evaluation. SROI (Social Return on Investment) is a social concept applied to the measurement of economic return on investment that aims to measure the social added value of social enterprises and reflect them in their performance. It is necessary to research for the provision of support and management for sustainable social enterprises, and to prepare a method for evaluating social enterprise by applying SROI. The Delphi 1st and 2nd surveys for the development of evaluation model for social enterprises using SROI were conducted by 50 social enterprise CEOs and experts. To produce the results of this study, the SPSS 20.0, AMOS 24 and Expert Choice 11 programs were used and the pairwise comparison analysis method was performed to analyze importance and priority. The results of the Delphi and AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) analysis showed that employment was the most important factor in social enterprises with the highest share of newly hired personnel. Employment-type social enterprises have the highest priority in terms of employment, income (income increase for vulnerable workers), and community contribution (affordable of social services), while the social service type was in order of employment, community contribution, and income (income increase for the vulnerable workers). On the other hand, the mixed type was employment (newly hired personnel), income (income increase of vulnerable workers), employment (social work participants’ switch to similar work after contract expiration), and community contribution (affordable of social services). This study makes efforts to form social capital by raising the public’s awareness of social value with efficient management through various evaluations of social enterprises and the emergence of various social enterprises. This study also emphasizes the need to better understand social enterprises as a multi-scholar and multi-dimensional organization that includes a multi-faced mechanism of social, economic, and environmental community development, away from understanding social enterprises as a specific business model. Full article

Artists are often seen as innovators and producers of creative and extraordinary new ideas. Additionally, experiencing art and artistic processes is an important opportunity for learning and exploration. Thus, corporations and scientific organizations have experimented with initiatives that generate artscience collaboration, such as fellowships, long-term collaborations with artists, and artist-in-residence programs. Looking at outcomes in the long-term, it is possible to identify important contributions to scientific, technological, and artistic fields that stem from artscience collaboration opportunities in organizations. On the other hand, it is often difficult to define immediate tangible outcomes of such processes as innovation as interdisciplinary interaction and learning processes are valuable experiences that do not always manifest directly in outcomes that can be measured. Drawing from cases of artscience programs and qualitative interviews with program managers, scientists, and artists, this article explores how artscience collaboration in an organization adds value and helps overcome organizational challenges regardless of such outcomes. By shifting the focus from the outcome to the process of artscience collaboration, it is possible to discover in more depth value-added contributions of artscience experiences on an individual level (e.g., new ways of knowing and thinking, understanding of materials and processes, and learning). Moreover, such contributions tell stories of connecting the process of artscience programs to the organizations’ goals of developing a new generation of leaders and driving a more adaptive, innovative culture. These benefits of artscience opportunities need to be supported by managerial activities in the organization. Thus, it enables a more differentiated understanding of possible contributions of artscience collaboration to organizations and helps to define the best model to create such opportunities. The article also recommends future research directions to further advance artscience collaboaration, especially in light of pertinent movements such as STEAM and Open Innovation, and promising developments in related fields such as neuro-aesthetics. Full article

The potential of Thai industrial product design is still inferior to that of the leading competitors in the world market, which gives more importance to design during the product development to increase Thailand’s competitive edge on a commercial scale. Product design is a very important part of sustainable growth in this industry. Thus, this research aims at investigating footwear design strategies for the Thai footwear industry to be excellent in the world market. The research has been designed with a mixed method of both qualitative and quantitative study. The quantitative data were collected through a semi-structured interview of 500 designers who presented their designs to join an award competition. The results reveal that the footwear design strategies consisted of four factors: (1) design, (2) market analysis, (3) innovation, and (4) information technology. This paper utilizes the method of structural equation modeling (SEM) to establish a strategic model for competitive advantage in the Thai footwear industry. The analysis results indicate that the footwear design strategies model could help make more effective policies and organization strategies for enterprises and designers to develop themselves towards excellence in the world market. Full article

Several studies have highlighted the importance of parent–teacher collaboration (PTC) in special education (SE). In Lebanon, there is a widespread perception among practitioners that out of many educational challenges facing SE organizations, there is the need to consolidate successful parent–teacher partnerships. We contribute to research on PTC by applying a conceptual framework from complexity science to investigate the interaction between teachers and parents in one SE organization in Lebanon. The interaction between teachers (internal agents) and parents (external agents) constitute an important dimension of the information flow between the school and its surrounding environment. We follow a narrative approach aiming at grasping the temporal dimension of teachers’ experience related to interacting with parents. Findings from this study indicate that teachers play an important role in sensing educational challenges and reaching out for a collaboration. However, although they gain access to valuable information regarding students’ background and social environment, several organizational factors restrain internal knowledge-sharing and communication about innovative practices. Teachers’ narratives depict learning on an individual level, but organizational barriers in the form of negative feedback loops for knowledge-sharing at the organizational level. This study recommends facilitating adaptive processes deriving from PTC. This demands positive feedback loops that facilitate behavioral variation, open communication, and thereby the exploration of innovative practices. Full article

Industry 4.0 is related to major changes, particularly in production. As such changes might have major implications for the labour market; the paper focuses on the assumptions of the human capital and its preparedness for Industry 4.0 in the Czech Republic. The findings are based on EUROSTAT, MEYS, OECD, ISCED, CZSO, and WEF. Based on such data, twelve indicators were selected and described in the results. Subsequently, the correlation analysis was carried out, using the data of the Czech Republic in order to estimate which indicators are related and thus to obtain a more detailed view of areas that need to be improved. The level of computer skills in the Czech Republic are increasing. Internet connection is around 80%. The share of technical workers in the Czech Republic is in the range of 30–40%. In terms of expenditure on education, the Czech Republic belongs to the countries of the eastern region. The number of graduates of technical professions managed to catch up with the development of the European Union (EU). In terms of employment in High-tech and Medium-high-tech areas, the Czech Republic is one of the leaders in the EU. Czech students have great potential in basic computer skills. Full article

Given the dearth of studies in developing and Asian countries’ context, the present study attempts to excavate the predictors of enterprise resource planning (ERP) adoption and implementation. Based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model and open innovation literature, an extended model is proposed encompassing mediator and moderator variables. The study follows the deducting reasoning approach with the positivism paradigm. Out of 235 responses, the study used 225 replies collected through a self-administered sampling, and the data were analyzed by using PLS-based structural equation modeling. The study revealed that the hypothesized direct influences are significant except the influence of facilitating conditions on actual use. Likewise, the intention to use mediates the impact of facilitating conditions on the actual use of ERP. However, there is no moderating effect of education and firms’ size among the hypothesized influence. The study contributes to advance the previous findings by using an extended UTAUT model and validates results with the rest of the world. Full article

This paper reports on a text mining-based case study aimed at determining how virtual reality (VR) games, as examples of really new products (RNPs), market themselves when they are introduced to the mass market. The goal was to examine the marketing foci of RNPs and any subsequent changes over time when the RNPs survive. VR games are a type of RNP offering several unique benefits, such as immersive gameplay and storytelling, which are advanced compared with their earlier counterparts. To examine the marketing foci of VR games, we collected 17,000 pieces of promotional text from a major online gaming marketplace, Steam Store, published from the beginning of the second quarter of 2016 to the third quarter of 2018. We performed text analysis (topic modeling) and found that game marketers paid particular attention to the VR nature of VR games when they first entered the marketplace. However, game content increasingly was emphasized in subsequent quarters. In addition, the marketing foci for VR games seemed to go through an exploratory process, which was not observed among non-VR games in the same period. The results offer insights into how the focus of RNPs’ marketing evolves as their newness fades. Full article