Search

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused huge and disruptive technological changes in the healthcare sector, transforming the way businesses and societies function. To respond to the global health crisis, there have been numerous innovation projects in the healthcare sector, including the fast design and manufacturing of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical devices, and testing, treatment, and vaccine technologies. Many of these innovative activities happen beyond organizational boundaries with collaboration and open innovation. In this paper, we review the current literature on open innovation strategy during the pandemic and adopt the co-evolution view of business ecosystems to address the context of change. Based on a detailed exploration of the COVID-19-related technologies in the UK and global healthcare sectors, we identify the key emerging themes of open innovation in crisis. Further discussions are conducted in relation to each theme. Our results and analysis can help provide policy recommendations for the healthcare sector, businesses, and society to recover from the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we analyze the deficiencies of specific frictional resistance in heating engineering. Based on economic specific frictional resistance, we put forward the concept of comprehensive specific frictional resistance, which considers the multiple factors of technology, economy, regulation modes, pipe segment differences, and medium pressure. Then, we establish a mathematical model of a heating network across its lifespan in order to develop a method for determining the comprehensive specific frictional resistance. Relevant conclusions can be drawn from the results. As an application, we have planned the heating engineering for Yangyuan County in China, which demonstrates the feasibility and superiority of the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores platform strategies along the business ecosystem lifecycle (BELC), based on a multiple-case study. Developing observations on platform strategies from a firm level to a business ecosystem level, the study investigates the issue of platform strategy through three views, respectively technology, application and organisation. As a result, a general evolutional pattern of platform strategy along the BELC is identified, where an open strategy emerges at the birth and expansion phases, then a dominating strategy rises at the authority phase, and finally the opportunistic strategy takes over at the renewal phase. This paper connects the core firms in the business ecosystem with the evolutionary platform strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how seven process innovations have been shared and adopted (or not adopted) between four factories of a multinational company located in Asia. In contrast to most previous studies in this area, these process innovation diffusions happened in a bottom-up manner in which the decision to share and to adopt is made by the individuals at the sites involved rather than by top management either at a local or corporate level. We observe that the factors enabling or discouraging the adoption of process innovation are highly dynamic. When work priorities shift over time, motivating factors once perceived as primary may become secondary, leading to nonadoption of the innovations. As the engineers face an increasing load of other tasks which also demand time and effort, the decision to adopt the Innovation or not seems to depend more on the effort required to adapt the innovation for local use than other factors. Innovations which are highly embedded in the original settings face slimmer chance of adoption by other sites as they are likely to require more effort in adapting them for local use. In contrast, innovations which are less embedded in original settings are more likely to be adopted due to the low adaptation effort needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With changes in the outdoor air temperature, the heat consumption of buildings also changes. Timely adjustment of the heating systems to ensure optimal operating conditions is extremely significant to save energy. In this study, the operation conditions of a heating system were analyzed numerically, and the existence, uniqueness, and stability of the optimal operation conditions of the heating system were proved. An operation optimization model that could obtain the optimal operation conditions was also established, and the correctness of the model was verified experimentally. Experimental results showed that when the flow rate was 0.606 m3/h, the supply water temperature was 67.13°C, water return temperature was 65.90°C, and the pump consumed the least amount of electricity. The experimental results and model calculation results showed that the operating cost is lower when the system flow rate is low and the supply water temperature is high under the same heat dissipation and indoor temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] The roadmapping method is applied to analyse the evolution of Chinese EV industry. [•] A ‘Triple Oscillation’ Model presents the emerging industry’s ecosystem evolution. [•] The business ecosystem lifecycle is expanded with one more initiating stage. [•] A conceptual agent-based model is proposed for business ecosystem evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how the technological ecosystem extension facilitates the technology substitution in an emerging industry. Specifically, this paper has three findings: 1) the technological ecosystem with an expanded scope including supply, demand and intermediaries; 2) two type of ecosystem extension as the bottom-up and top-down ecosystem extension; 3) the determinants of sustaining the ecosystem extension. We have conducted in-depth interviews in the Chinese low-speed electric vehicle industry, which adopted the bottom-up ecosystem extension by comparing with the traditional car industry with top-down ecosystem extension to the emerging EV industry. This paper also offers managerial implications to the focal firms and policy makers to capture the emerging opportunities within an ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]