Currently, the prime focus for US business plans should not be on the manufacturing process design and delivery processes, but on greatly improving innovation leadership, design engineering capability, and sales and marketing innovation. These three areas have been sadly lacking significant performance improvement during the past 20 years. The magic word for US business is "simplification." Most of the books written to date focus on the solution development aspect of the Innovation System Cycle, which is less than 15% of the total innovative system. Focusing on solution development is only the start -- the rest of the innovation system cycle is what turns an idea into a profitable business. The techniques in this book are directed at key tasks across the innovative process, such as maximizing quality, productivity, maintainability, usability, and reliability, while focusing on reducing the product cycle time and costs within the innovative process. This book uses more than 50 different approaches/concepts, which leads the reader in a very simple method for understanding, establishing, and effectively using an innovative system to provide a significant marketing advantage. Previous books have focused on what to do; however, this book focuses on how to do it. It transforms a complicated complex system into easy-to-use and understand methodology.

Currently, the prime focus for US business plans should not be on the manufacturing process design and delivery processes, but on greatly improving innovation leadership, design engineering capability, and sales and marketing innovation. These three areas have been sadly lacking significant performance improvement during the past 20 years. The magic word for US business is "simplification." Most of the books written to date focus on the solution development aspect of the Innovation System Cycle, which is less than 15% of the total innovative system. Focusing on solution development is only the start -- the rest of the innovation system cycle is what turns an idea into a profitable business. The techniques in this book are directed at key tasks across the innovative process, such as maximizing quality, productivity, maintainability, usability, and reliability, while focusing on reducing the product cycle time and costs within the innovative process. This book uses more than 50 different approaches/concepts, which leads the reader in a very simple method for understanding, establishing, and effectively using an innovative system to provide a significant marketing advantage. Previous books have focused on what to do; however, this book focuses on how to do it. It transforms a complicated complex system into easy-to-use and understand methodology.

The systems of innovation approach is considered by many to be a useful analytical approach for better understanding innovation processes as well as the production and distribution of knowledge in the economy. It is an appropriate framework for the empirical study of innovations in their contexts and is relevant for policy makers. This text is the result of the work within an international inter-disciplinary network or "working seminar" with the task of building a more solid and sophisticated conceptual and theoretical foundation for the continued study of innovations in a systemic context. The book has three parts. The first presents an overview and tries to work out some conceptual problems. In the second, the systems of innovation approach is related to innovation theory. Part three is devoted to increasing understanding of the functioning and dynamics of systems of innovation. There is also an introduction where the genesis and anatomy of different systems of innovation approaches are discussed and where the systems of innovation approach is characterized in nine dimensions.

This book discusses a six-step transformation cycle in which the tasks of innovation management – ranked according to their relevance for companies – are placed in a systematic order. Presenting an in-depth discussion on innovation and transformation, the authors delve into strategic themes such as business models and strategic positioning, which are fundamental to the innovation process. It also describes the underlying processes and roles of innovation management, and the required organizational structures. Following process organization and organizational structure, the authors highlight how the appropriate human resource strategy should look and the manner of personnel selection or development to be implemented. The authors also provide tools and systems that are assigned to specific employees working with innovation management; these deal with innovation audit, knowledge management, idea management, financing and budgeting innovations, marketing and property rights. The book also sheds light on how the effectiveness of the innovation process can be monitored using indicator systems. This is a handy resource for managers looking for a structured strategy and how to implement it to achieve optimal innovation management and reap its benefits.

This book consists of chapters based on selected papers presented at the EcoDesign2015 symposium (9th International Symposium on Environmentally Conscious Design and Inverse Manufacturing). The symposium, taking place in Tokyo in December 2015, has been leading the research and practices of eco-design of products and product-related services since it was first held in 1999. The proceedings of EcoDesign2011 were also published by Springer. Eco-design of products and product-related services (or product life cycle design) are indispensable to realize the circular economy and to increase resource efficiencies of our society. This book covers the state of the art of the research and the practices in eco-design, which are necessary in both developed and developing countries. The chapters of the book, all of which were peer-reviewed, have been contributed by authors from around the world, especially from East Asia, Europe, and Southeast Asia. The features of the book include (1) coverage of the latest topics in the field, e.g., global eco-design management, data usage in eco-design, and social perspectives in eco-design; (2) an increased number of authors from Southeast Asian countries, with a greater emphasis on eco-design in emerging economies; (3) high-quality manuscripts, with the number of chapters less than half of that of the previous book.

It happens over and over again. Some innovation (a new product, a management trend) comes along that captures the public's imagination. Everybody joins the parade with great fanfare and high expectations. This "next big thing" promises to transform the companies that adopt it -- and inflict great peril on those that don't. Then, when the innovation fails to deliver as promised immediately, everyone starts bailing out. Investments are wasted; stock prices plunge; disillusionment sets in. It doesn't have to be this way. In Mastering the Hype Cycle, Jackie Fenn and Mark Raskino explain what drives this pattern and how your company can avoid its potential dangers. By understanding the hype cycle, you can ride it more skillfully -- timing your investment decisions so that the innovations you adopt stand the best chance of succeeding in the long-term. Drawing on company examples and Gartner's proven STREET (Scope, Track, Rank, Evaluate, Evangelize, Transfer) framework, the authors show how to orchestrate the key steps in the innovation-adoption process -- from choosing which innovations to take on and when in their life cycle you should adopt, to paving the way for a successful introduction. The hype cycle isn't going away. But this book arms you with the strategies you need to ride the crest of a new idea to success -- and steer clear of the trough of disillusionment.

This book presents case studies of governance of innovation policy in selected OECD countries. It focuses on providing an analysis of governance challenges, institutional changes and policy learning practices.

The book addresses the relationship between knowledge, complexity and innovation systems. It integrates research findings from a broad area including economics, business studies, management studies, geography, mathematics and science & technology contributions from a wide range group of international experts. In particular, it offers insights about knowledge creation and spillovers, innovation and learning systems, innovation diffusion processes and innovation policies. The contributions provide an excellent coverage of current conceptual and theoretical developments and valuable insights from both empirical and conceptual work. The reader gets an overview about the state of the art of the role of innovation systems and knowledge creation and diffusion in geographical space.

Why are some regions and cities so good at attracting talented people, creating high-level knowledge, and producing exciting new ideas and innovations? What are the ingredients of success? Can innovative cities be created and stimulated, or do they just flourish by mere chance? This book analyses the development and management of innovation systems in cities, in order to provide a better understanding of what makes such systems perform. The book opens by developing a conceptual model that combines insights from urban economics with economic geography, urban governance and place marketing. This highlights the relevance of path dependence, different types of proximity (and the role of clusters, networks and platforms), institutional conditions, place attractiveness and place identity in the evolution of local innovation systems. The authors then draw on this conceptual framework to structure empirical case studies in three cities with a relatively high innovation performance: Eindhoven (the Netherlands), Stockholm (Sweden) and Suzhou (China). Through these case studies they provide a detailed analysis of how successful innovation systems evolve and what makes them tick. Unique to this book is the linking of analysis to concrete policy and management responses. The book ends with a discussion on six themes in the development of successful urban innovation systems: firm-capabilities and leader firms, higher education and research, attractive environment, place branding, institutional environment and entrepreneurship. Each theme is examined fully, drawing lessons from the case studies, and from recent insights and other cases discussed in the literature. This title will be of interest to students, researchers and policymakers involved in regional innovation systems, knowledge locations and cluster development.