Browsing by Subject "Innovation"
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Item Consumer-driven innovation : a photography case study(2011-08) Crawford, Brad Thomas; Nichols, Steven Parks, 1950-; Darwin, Thomas Jason, 1966-The effects consumer-driven innovation can have on an industry can be difficult to quantify. In this thesis I seek to highlight their existence and underscore their influence by observing the historical impact of numerous innovations on modern technology and society. Using the photography industry as a case study, I will show how successful companies leverage consumers to increase profits and technological development. Companies unable or unwilling to adapt will struggle to maintain profits and become insignificant in the market place. It is also important to consider the enablement of customers by these manufacturers. Advancements in the primary industry as well as supporting industries can lead to variability in market growth and often stimulate societal changes. As consumer innovators progress towards production, it is increasingly important that manufacturers adapt and redefine their market presence. Consumers are a powerful force and represent more than financial capital. My research shows that creative companies can harness consumer energy and find opportunities in the intellectual capital of the crowd.Item Control, learning, and innovation : a syncretic approach(2010-05) Romo de Vivar y Sandoval, Carmen Alejandra; Browning, Larry D.This research focuses on understanding the processes involved in successful innovation---a topic that has appeared in a large body of research, but no conclusive trend has emerged about it. For this reason, I chose a different lens in order to gain a more panoramic view of the events leading up to an innovation. In particular, this research utilized a methodology and ontology that set it apart from previous work. In previous research control/exploitation and learning/exploration are either presented as two categorically separate concepts or as continuum that runs between them. This research supports the idea that innovation operates on a continuum but does not support the idea that it only occurs when the pendulum settles toward the learning/exploration side. Instead, the data shows that innovation could indeed occur at any point along the learning/exploration side of the continuum and even at the central point where learning/exploration and control/exploitation weigh evenly. To conceptualize this middle point, I term this a "syncretism" of two normally opposing forces to account for a significant portion of the interview data.Item Design with innovation: Transforming an urban playa stormwater site(2008-12) Glancy, Candi Lu; Klein, Charles H.; Haukos, David A.; Billing, John C.Stormwater management in the Playa Lakes Region of West Texas historically requires that playa wetlands in city limits be modified to collect runoff from seasonal storms. These urban playas often serve a second function, that of an open space park. Design of these parks frequently lacks innovation in aesthetics and stormwater cleansing functions. Creativity in stormwater solutions extends beyond the typical functional-only design. In cities such as Renton, Washington, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Gilbert, Arizona, stormwater and wastewater have been innovatively incorporated into the urban culture. This thesis explores an innovative solution for the Playa Lakes Region of West Texas that goes beyond what was discovered in the literature review. Design criteria are developed to transform Lake 87, a Lubbock, Texas urban stormwater management site, into an aesthetically pleasing, artistic, innovative site that integrates the history and nature of the area through native plantings and sculpture without compromising its primary function. The design also resolves increasing erosion through innovative best management practices (BMP) and landforming. This thesis investigates playa wetlands (Lake 87’s origin), urban stormwater function and management practices (Lake 87’s role in the community), aesthetic and artistic design solution case studies, and the role of art in society (Lake 87’s potential). The innovative design solution for Lake 87 has a complexity that appeals to the senses so that different interpretations are possible. The design attempts to engage the participant by becoming part of the harmony and contrast that is present in nature. It is an exploration of an alternative in stormwater management.Item The effects of empathic experience design techniques on product design innovation(2010-05) Saunders, Matthew Nelson; Seepersad, Carolyn C.; Wood, Kristin L.The effects of empathic experience design (EED) on the product design process are investigated through a series of product redesign experimental studies. As defined, empathic experience design is the simulation of the experiences of a lead user, or someone who uses a product in an extreme condition. To better understand product innovation, the link between creativity in engineering design and commercial market success is explored through literature and a study of award-winning products is performed to analyze the current trends in innovation. The findings suggest that products are becoming increasingly more innovative in the ways in which they interact with users and their surroundings and that a gap exists between the current tools available for engineers to innovate and the types of innovations present in award-winning products. The application of EED to a concept generation study shows that empathic experiences while interacting with a prototype results in more innovative concepts over typical interactions. The experimental group also saw an increase in user interaction innovations and a decrease in technical feasibility. The application of EED to a customer needs study compares the effect of empathic experiences in an articulated use interview setting. The EED interviews discovered 2.5 times the number of latent customer needs than the control group. A slight decrease in the breadth of topics covered was also seen, but was compensated for when used in conjunction with categorical questioning. Overall the use of empathic experience design is shown to increase the level of innovation throughout the product design process.Item Emerging models for funding cleantech innovation : the Alberta case study(2015-05) Udwin, Trevor Charles; Rai, Varun; Pierce, SuzanneCleantech is a broad term and requires further definition. The first part of this thesis will paint a landscape of the cleantech industry, which will in turn help define the term. The cleantech industry as it is generally perceived has come on hard times; talk of cleantech is all but absent in the corridors of Silicon Valley and chambers of Congress. Starting in the late 2000s both endogenous and exogenous factors compounded and investment in the industry dropped, as traditional early investors like Venture Capitalists (VC) confronted barriers that were unique to the industry and antithetical to their investment model. Notwithstanding, since the cleantech downturn some VC investors have emerged successful and have sparked new interest in the industry. Possessing the knowhow and skills that will allow them to continue thriving in the space, these VCs will play an important role in the growth of the sector. Other investment models are required to take hold where VCs were unable to succeed, however, providing the influx of capital that is required to incentivize disruptive change in such a large and dynamic industry. Moving forward, the success of the cleantech industry will rely on whether new models for early investment will fill gaps where traditional models have failed. To overcome the investment Valley of Death (there are multiple) cleantech companies need investment models that provide assurance for time sensitive follow-on funding, as they scale their technologies from prototype all the way to commercialization. This thesis will build on prior research highlighting that the investment challenges of yesteryear have shifted traditional investors in the VC community away from cleantech infrastructure and towards IT-like investments. Using the Alberta model as successful sample of an ecosystem of alternative models for funding cleantech innovation, this thesis will provide a better understanding of how investment in cleantech infrastructure can reach necessary funding levels in order to commercialize the myriad of clean energy technologies that promise to help mitigate climate change.Item An empirical study of the effectiveness of empathic experience design(2012-05) Johnson, Daniel Glenn; Seepersad, Carolyn C.; Crawford, Richard H.Engineers recognize the need for innovation in product design, and many methods are available for creating more innovative products and better satisfying customer needs. Empathic Experience Design (EED) is one such method. The EED method exposes the designer to empathic experiences, which are intended to help the designer empathize with customers who use the product under a variety of non-ideal conditions and then transfer that enhanced understanding to an ensuing concept generation activity. This thesis studies the effectiveness of the EED methodology when used in conjunction with three types of empathic experiences: sensory, physical, and cognitive. Experiments were conducted over the course of two years, in which students were asked to develop concepts for a next-generation alarm clock or litter collection device; the resulting concepts were analyzed to determine the originality and technical quality of each concept. The subject group concepts, which were developed after participating in empathic experiences, were compared with the control group concepts, which were developed without empathic experiences. The subject group concepts demonstrated significantly higher originality than the control group concepts, without measurable sacrifices in technical quality, as well as significant increases in innovative features related to user interactions. The method has been shown to be effective for enhancing innovation when the empathic experiences are aimed at sensory and kinematic priming activities that challenge a user’s sensory or physical capabilities.Item Essays on international trade(2010-05) French, Scott Thomas; Corbae, Dean; Abrevaya, Jason; Freitas, Kripa; Ramondo, Natalia; Ruhl, KimThis dissertation consists of three essays pertaining to the causes of the levels and composition of the international trade flows of nations, and the consequential implications for the levels of per capita income and welfare of their populations. The first of these documents a pattern of comparative advantage in product level, bilateral trade data that conventional quantitative trade models have difficulty explaining. It goes on to develop a theory of product level productivity differences based on endogenous differences in the allocation of research and development into product and process innovation across countries over time, and it shows that, when fitted to cross-country manufacturing wage data, the predicted product level technology distribution is consistent with the observed trade pattern. The second essay shows that the distribution of technology levels inferred in the first essay can help explain the inability of both ad-hoc and theoretically based gravity models of trade to account for the observed positive correlation between the percentage of manufacturing output that is traded and countries' per capita income. It derives a modified gravity equation based on a Ricardian model of trade with deterministic product level technology differences across countries. It then uses estimates from a product level gravity estimation to compute the component of this equation that differs from a conventional gravity equation in order to determine the extent to which the observed concentration of comparative advantage in a common set of products for low-income countries explains the small percentage of their output that is exported. The final essay shows that a simple model of firm profit maximization in the presence of sunk costs of entering the export market is broadly consistent with the observed persistence of exporting behavior in firm level data. It uses this simple model and moments from data on US manufacturing firms to estimate the value of the sunk export entry costs faced by these firms using an indirect inference strategy. These costs are shown to be substantial relative the revenue stream of a typical firm.Item Essays on real options and strategic interactions(2012-08) Dehghani Firouzabadi, Mohammad Hossein; Boyarchenko, Svetlana I.; Almazan, Andres; Stinchcombe, Maxwell B.; Tompaidis, Stathis; Wiseman, ThomasChapter 2 considers technology adoption under both technological and subsidy uncertainties. Uncertainty in subsidies for green technologies is considered as an example. Technological progress is exogenous and modeled as a jump process with a drift. The analytical solution is presented for cases when there is no subsidy uncertainty and when the subsidy changes once. The case when the subsidy follows a time invariant Markov process is analyzed numerically. The results show that improving the innovation process raises the investment thresholds. When technological jumps are small or rare, this improvement reduces the expected time before technology adoption. However, when technological jumps are large or abundant, this improvement may raise this expected time. Chapter 3 studies technology adoption in a duopoly where the unbiased technological change improves production efficiency. Technological progress is exogenous and modeled as a jump process with a drift. There is always a Markov perfect equilibrium in which the firm with more efficient technology never preempts its rival. Also, a class of equilibria may exist that lead to a smaller industry surplus. In these equilibria either of the firms may preempt its rival in a set of technology efficiency values. The first investment does not necessarily happen at the boundary of this set due to the discrete nature of the technology progress. The set shrinks and eventually disappears when the difference between firms’ efficiencies increases. Chapter 4 studies the behavior of two firms after a new investment opportunity arises. Firms either invest immediately or wait until market uncertainty is resolved. Two types of separating equilibrium are possible when sunk costs are private information. In the first type the firm with lower cost invests first. In the second type the firm with higher cost invests first leading to a smaller industry surplus. The results indicate that the second type is possible only for strictly negatively correlated sunk costs. Numerical analysis illustrates that when first mover advantage is large, the firm that delays the investment should be almost certain about its rival’s sunk cost. When market risk increases, the equilibria can exist when the firm is less certain.Item Exploring Two Phases of Design-by-Analogy "Multiple Solutions" and "Multiple Analogies"(2010-10-12) Gadwal, ApekshaIdea generation and design-by-analogy are core parts of design. Designers need tools to assist them in developing creative and innovative ideas. Analogy is one such tool that helps designers solve design problems. It is a stimulus that helps generate innovative solutions to a design problem. It is used to generate novel ideas by transferring information (i.e. mapping elements) from a known domain (base) to an unknown domain (target). Multiple solutions can be developed based on a single analog and designers derive principles of design from the analogs (products) they experience. There is little research that discusses creating multiple solutions from a single analog or how multiple analogs can assist designers in mapping high level principles of design. Multiple paths are available to improve the design-by-analogy process and help designers understand the process better. This thesis explores two phases of design-by-analogy in which designers have difficulty generating multiple inferences from a single source analog and identifying high level principles given multiple example analogs in the presence of noise. Two hypotheses are proposed to explore the importance of analogies in design. 1. A lone designer is able to generate multiple inferences from a single source analog when instructed to do so. 2. The mapping of high level principles increases with the increase in the number of example analogs and decreases with the amount of noise. Two experiments, "Multiple Solutions" and "Multiple Analogies" are conducted to answer the proposed research questions and to understand how designers can become better analogical reasoners. The results from the "Multiple Solutions" experiment show that engineers, when directed to, can create multiple solutions from a single analog. Results from the "Multiple Analogies" experiment also satisfy the hypothesis that the mapping of high level principles increases with an increase in the number of analogs and decreases with distracters. A significant interaction is also observed between these two factors. The results indicate more future work with a greater sample size.Item Government policy and innovation activity : a patent study of solar photovoltaic balance of system in Japan(2014-08) Takeda, Chihiro; Rai, VarunThis report studied innovation activity in four areas of the solar photovoltaic balance-of-system (BOS) technologies (inverters, mounting equipment, monitoring systems, and site assessment) in the Japanese market. Through patent searches with specific keywords, this study found that innovation activity in these four technology areas increased and decreased responding to both supply-side and demand-side policies. This report also empirically studied effects of demand-pull policies on innovation activity in the BOS technology areas. The regression analysis of the patent data found that the demand-side policies such as residential subsidy programs employed by the Japanese government were a major factor which influenced innovation activities in these technology areas in the Japanese market. Finally, the regression analysis also found that the termination of the residential subsidy program by the government in 2006 had a negative effect on the innovation activity of the four BOS technologies.Item Innovation and expert evaluations : the influence of a firm's approach to innovation on assessments in financial markets(2012-05) Theeke, Matthew Trevor; Polidoro, Francisco; Fredrickson, James W.; Benner, Mary; Graebner, Melissa; Haunschild, Pamela; Lewis, KylePrior research shows that when a firm uses an approach to innovation based on diverse, distant, and distinctive knowledge it can enhance its ability to develop innovations. However, less is known about how such an approach to innovation affects evaluations in financial markets by securities analysts and investors. In this dissertation I examine how a firm’s approach to innovation influences its ability to attract coverage and favorable recommendations from securities analysts. After considering the influence of innovation on analysts’ evaluations, I examine how analysts’ recommendations, in turn, influence a firm’s ability to attract investment. I argue that when a firm uses an approach to innovation based on diverse, distant, and distinctive knowledge it may complicate securities analysts’ efforts to evaluate its strategy, which may make them less willing to provide the firm with coverage and favorable recommendations. I also explore how disagreement among securities analysts’ recommendations may create opportunities for investors, which can ultimately help a firm to attract investment. This dissertation contributes to strategy research by highlighting an important trade-off related to a firm’s approach to innovation. Whereas prior research has shown that using diverse, distant, and distinctive knowledge helps a firm to develop knowledge-based resources, this research, in contrast, shows that such an approach to innovation may hinder efforts to capture value from these resources in financial markets. This research also contributes to the literature on financial intermediaries. It shows that financial markets are not fully intermediated by analysts’ recommendations and that uncertainty reflected in disagreement among analysts’ recommendations can signal valuable opportunities for investors that will make them more likely to buy shares in a firm. Furthermore, it also shows that characteristics of investors and aspects of a firm’s innovation strategy, which enhance investors’ ability to identify and profit from opportunities that arise under uncertainty, will make investors even more likely to buy shares when analysts disagree about their recommendations.Item Innovation restrained : unlocking the innovation of acquired software startups(2011-12) McNutt, Robert Blaine; Darwin, Thomas Jason, 1966-; Nichols, Steven Parks, 1950-; Lewis, KyleThe ability to exploit disruptive innovation is the main factor in a company’s continued success. The ability to significantly advance a field or create a new field is paramount not only to a venture’s ability to generate revenue, but it is key to our nation’s economic vitality. Yet today’s business environment is dominated by funding options and exit strategies focused on near-term results and unreasonable profit expectations (Estrin, 2008b). Given these constraints, software startups must focus on incremental innovation to obtain initial funding. The result is an industry focused on short-term strategies that limit the likelihood of developing disruptive innovations and companies with long-term focuses. Current business models do not adequately address a key factor in preventing the loss of innovations and stagnancy in industries and their markets. New business frameworks and models are required that focus on preserving the core teams found in software startups and to provide them with the runway they require to develop disruptive innovations. Nowhere is innovation more crucial than in the startup environment where the abilities to invent, adapt, outwit, and outlast on a shoestring budget predict success. This paper evaluates today’s business models to determine how they help overcome roadblocks faced by software startups in today’s acquisition environment, identifies related research, and recommends new models and adaptations to existing models to overcome these roadblocks. “It is estimated that 70-95 percent of acquisitions fail. A significant percentage is due to the friction that is created by trying to integrate the startup with the large company's financials, HR department, product, market and business model. Most startups when they are acquired are uncertain on many of these dimensions, and forcing them to conform on any one of these dimensions to the large company can stunt their growth and often kill them.” – (Herrmann, September 2011) This paper investigates how to preserve innovation within a startup and within an acquiring company, how innovation is interwoven in team members, the leadership characteristics that inspire innovation, and the importance of balancing the value of innovation against process. The recommended guidance and frameworks focus on preserving the core team and their innovations, as well as generating a strong return on investment, when an established business acquires a startup. The perspectives presented are based on the author’s experiences as a key team member in two startups in the mid 1990s, multiple failed internal incubation groups within a fortune 100 company, and in considering a new startup in today’s environment.Item Innovation study in engineering design(2009-12) Krager, Jarden Ellison; Wood, Kristin L.; Jensen, Dan D.Well developed innovation processes are becoming an essential component to the continued success of a large number of industries. Such processes build upon the evolutionary steps taken to advance innovation. In light of the need for innovation, companies and engineers must create the most efficient processes for their systems or product development teams. A step toward the creation of such processes, as well as the corresponding teaching of such processes in higher-education, is the development of a baseline of current best practices. This paper considers a contribution to this effort in the form of a study of a specific group of innovation practitioners. The study was created to probe a group of leaders in the engineering design domain using technical, demographic, and short answer questions. Various analysis methods are used to obtain a fundamental view of the answers to the questions but also the demographics of the participant group. Two deductive analysis methods are used, the first a set of hypotheses are explored from participant responses, and second a qualitative technique to understand links in the short answer portion of the study. An additional inductive approach is used, consisting of a correlating approach to compare responses to questions and understand trends across the participants. Results from the analysis emphasize the current perceptions of innovation by the participants and opportunities to refine our search for better innovation practices.Item Investigating the innovation capabilities of undergraduate engineering students(2013-08) Williams, Paul T; Seepersad, Carolyn C.This thesis describes a method for measuring the innovation capabilities of mechanical engineering students and presents the results of a yearlong experiment. A review of relevant literature shows that it is unclear whether the innovation capabilities of engineering students increase or decrease over time. Experiments were conducted at two universities in which students were asked to redesign an everyday electromechanical product in a sketch-based concept generation activity. Student participants were also asked to complete a self-efficacy survey. Nearly one thousand concepts were generated from a combination of freshmen and seniors. The concepts were evaluated for originality, technical feasibility, and innovation characteristics by multiple raters. At both schools, the findings suggest that the senior-level engineering students are more creative than their freshman-level counterparts without sacrificing technical feasibility. Additionally, the seniors rated higher for originality at the end of the semester than they scored prior to taking their senior design class. These results suggest that the mechanical engineering curricula, and especially the senior-level Engineering Design courses, are having a positive effect on student creativity.Item Journalism innovation and the ethic of participation : a case study of the Knight Foundation and its news challenge(2010-08) Lewis, Seth Corwin; Reese, Stephen D.; Buckley, Cynthia J.; Chyi, Hsiang I.; Gil de Zúñiga, Homero; Lasorsa, Dominic L.The digitization of media has undermined much of the social authority and economic viability on which U.S. journalism relied during the 20th century. This disruption has also opened a central tension for the profession: how to reconcile the need for occupational control against growing opportunities for citizen participation. How that tension is navigated will affect the ultimate shape of the profession and its place in society. This dissertation examines how the leading nonprofit actor in journalism, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, has sought to help journalism innovate out of its professional crisis. This case study engages a series of mixed methods—including interviews, textual analysis, and secondary data analysis—to generate a holistic portrayal of how the Knight Foundation has attempted to transform itself and the journalism field in recent years, particularly through its signature Knight News Challenge innovation contest. From a sociology of professions perspective, I found that the Knight Foundation altered the rhetorical and actual boundaries of journalism jurisdiction. Knight moved away from “journalism” and toward “information” as a way of seeking the wisdom of the crowd to solve journalism’s problems. This opening up of journalism’s boundaries created crucial space in which innovators, from inside and outside journalism, could step in and bring change to the field. In particular, these changes have allowed the concept of citizen participation, which resides at the periphery of mainstream newswork, to become embraced as an ethical norm and a founding doctrine of journalism innovation. The result of these efforts has been the emergence of a new rendering of journalism—one that straddles the professional-participatory tension by attempting to “ferry the values” of professional ideals even while embracing new practices more suited to a digital environment. Ultimately, this case study matters for what it suggests about professions in turbulent times. Influential institutions can bring change to their professional fields by acting as boundary-spanning agents—stepping outside the traditional confines of their field, altering the rhetorical and structural borders of professional jurisdiction to invite external contribution and correction, and altogether creating the space and providing the capital for innovation to flourish.Item Management practices for sustainability of small, technology oriented businesses(2012-12) Quezada, Arturo; McCann, Robert Bruce, 1948-; Nichols, Steven Parks, 1950-The focal point for this research is a drilling automation small business. Questions regarding survival, growth, innovation, flexibility and professional management related to this technology business are seeded as the root for the research. Topics were selected based on the experience of the author as an attempt to provide answers to such questions. In a broader context, small businesses make an important contribution to the economy and job creation. Low survival rates raise questions about the factors that influence the success or failure of such businesses. Researches have attempted to identify such factors. However, there are limited theoretical models that were generated based on a small business setting. Many factors and their interactions among each other could determine the survival of a small business. However, there are techniques and philosophies that enhance the potential for success. Some of those techniques and philosophies proposed by authors researched are the Lean Startup methodology, analysis of roadblocks and speed bumps on the Product Development Process model, participative management, competencies alignment and outsourcing. Correlations between the small drilling automation business and research are made in order to generate the answers to the questions proposed initially. Ultimately, in regard to the company I work for, generation of intellectual property via outsourcing, deep knowledge of the potential market, financial flexibility obtained from capital and other resources by means of the relationships established helped the company to survive startup and grow. Founding expertise translated into good behavioral focus supported a sustained growth stage and competitiveness. There are applicable models and methodologies that serve to guide to faster innovation where associated risks are managed by having the multiple solutions available. The level of informality tolerated within the firm should be related to the level of performance, so for us there may be benefit to a more formal evaluation of the strategy, uncovering relationships and details not anticipated, that could lead to different decisions. Overcoming capital restraints to earn financial flexibility was particularly beneficial to our initial success. At current size and complexity level, it would be beneficial for our company to evaluate more formal tactical management.Item Mapping of creativity in capstone design process(2008-05) Mendias, Johnny J.; Ekwaro-Osire, Stephen; Ertas, Atila; Rasty, JahanBringing a concept into reality is intriguing to any novice designers in academia. The development of a concept is created by novel thought, known as creativity. The application of creativity has been viewed as a substantial foundation to innovative design development. The motivation of this research is to enhance creativity in senior capstone design projects and discover a method to map creativity in capstone design process. To effectively enhance creativity, tools have to be developed to map it. Recently, the application of design notebooks have been used to determine the incubation of creativity through student participation in capstone design projects. As a result, design documentation is a good indicator of teamwork practices through group interaction and creative development. This research is proposed to determine the context of creativity through the creative elements, context of the individuals involved, inhibitions of creative progress, and the sustainable methods to foster creativity. This research included two student teams working on two different capstone design projects over the course of two semesters. The following team outcomes were used in this study namely, i) design notebooks, ii) project reports, iii) project presentations, and iv) the final artifact. To assess the creative context of the documentation, specific coding rubrics were applied to the design notebooks, proposals, and presentations to describe and quantify the creative instances that occurred in the course of the design process, and interpreted into the creative process. The influence and inhibitions of creativity were then reviewed upon completion of each respected capstone project and determine the creative thought and motivation to converge to innovative solutions. A team of professional designers analyzed the team reports and the final artifact through the use of questionnaires applied to the student research. As a result, the context to enhance creativity in capstone design is the capstone design team and is motivated extrinsically during the creative activities of divergence and incubation. The team applies the creative activities most effectively during the production phase of the capstone design process, which supported the need for a cohesive creative process to be implemented during capstone design activities.Item Measuring China’s success in developing a framework for domestic innovation(2013-05) Schultz, Kaye Frances; Rai, VarunThis report attempts to assess the degree to which China is developing a framework that supports domestic innovative capacity. This framework is not a predefined set of components, but is instead a combination of political, institutional, market, and technology factors and linkages that support information flows, interactions between entities, and incentives necessary to increase domestic innovation. Literature suggests that factors contributing to this framework may be influenced by domestic policy, and this report attempts to identify Chinese policies that contribute to the development of this framework within the Chinese solar photovoltaic (PV) and automotive industries. This report uses patent and export data as proxies for innovation in these two industries to measure the presence of this framework. The data suggest that the framework supporting domestic innovation in China is further developed for the solar PV industry than the automotive industry, but that the solar PV industry is still far from leading global innovation. Finally, the report identifies potential factors that have contributed to the variations between these two industries, and challenges that both industries may face in the near future.Item MRAP : marketing military innovation(2016-05) Hasik, James M., 1966-; Inboden, William, 1972-; Suri, Jeremi; Hutchings, Robert; Pedahzur, Ami; Mukunda, GautamMilitary procurement has a generally poor popular perception, as costing too much, taking too long, and generally underperforming expectations. We might assume that wartime, emergency procurement of military materiel would be easier, but it too can be surprisingly difficult. Conflicts over military priorities, industrial unpreparedness, and politicians’ access to information can pose serious challenges. Fortunately, there are many pathways to military innovation, but industry – the agent which actually produces new materiel – is one that is systematically under-appreciated in the literature. I ask how, when unexpected battlefield problems arise, industry, the military, and government can work together to bring innovative, wartime solutions. To answer this question, I examine the case of a disruptive military threat during the American counterinsurgent campaign in Iraq – that of the improvised explosive device, or IED, and of the response with a particular type of military vehicle – the Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected vehicle, or MRAP, largely from 2003 through 2007. I have used this case to propose new theory on the under-appreciated importance of marketing in military procurement.Item A new framework for African smallholder agriculture : harnessing innovation and the private sector to drive sustainable development(2010-05) Kosoris, Justin Michael; Wilson, Robert Hines; Wilson, Patricia A.; Evans, Angela M.This report will outline a new framework for improved yields and increased sustainability in Sub-Saharan African smallholder agriculture. Given the failures of agricultural development aid and policy in the past, cross-sector collaboration among local farmer networks, national governments, and private corporations could represent a new model to foster sustainable agricultural production and growth, as each has had past successes but have not traditionally come together to work as a collaborative unit. This paper will examine each sector to look at best practices and then develop a framework for such collaboration. After a normative case with a positive outlook as to the potential for implementing the framework to Senegal‘s groundnut sector, the paper concludes that the framework can work in a variety of settings as long as one is aware of and respects local conditions.