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Is Asia ready for more elderly people with cancer?

Private and academic institutions are embracing E-learning as an attempt to improve the learning process, encourage knowledge transfer and compliment their existing learning environment. For many countries with a large population, limited resources and remote geographical areas like Indonesia, E-learning holds the key to better education and provide better access to knowledge resources. E-learning is still new in Indonesia and there are not many studies reported in the literature. This study aimed to provide some ideas about the state of E-learning in Indonesia, specifically in higher education institutions. A survey was carried out to reveal the state of E-learning in higher education institutions in Indonesia. Sample of the population consists of lecturers, developers and researchers who work for higher education institutions in Indonesia. While the study showed that most of the E-learning projects are new and the level of participation is slow, the quality of E-learning courses is perceived as fair. As E-learning development in Indonesia is still in its early stages, serious efforts are needed to facilitate E-learning in higher institutions. The study identified infrastructure problems and staffs' reluctance to adopt E-learning as the main problems for the slow implementation and adoption of E-learning. Despite these problems, E-learning is expected to gain momentum in Indonesia as it is perceived as an effective way to educate the population of Indonesia.

Objectives: This study aimed at exploring the factors that motivated and hindered the medical students to share their knowledge with each other. Method: A survey questionnaire was used to collect the data from 260 medical students selected by proportionate stratified simple random sampling technique from University College of Medicine of The University of Lahore, Pakistan. Results: A total of 252 (96.9%) questionnaires were received from respondents. Of the seven purposes for knowledge sharing (KS) (if grades/exams do matter), two obtained a maximum mean score of 3.88; while one got 4.02 if grades/exams do not matter. Four of the eight motivational factors got top mean scores of 3.59 to 3.88. Of the 11 barriers, “People only share with those who share with them” obtained a highest mean score (3.81). Conclusions: Major findings showed that medical students discussed exam-related matters and enhanced their own understanding by KS. Class participation and group discussion stimulated them to share knowledge with their peers. They considered give-and-take a big barrier of KS. The overall opinions of female students scored higher than males.

The objective of the study is to examine the librarians’ attitude towards knowledge sharing including its concept, potential benefits, communication channels, and influencing factors that may motivate or hinder knowledge sharing practices in academic libraries in India. A questionnaire was used for data collection, 91 LIS professionals from Indian academic libraries were surveyed. In addition, 10 in-depth interviews were conducted. The findings of the study show that understanding of knowledge sharing concepts among librarians is varied though most of them perceived knowledge sharing as “dissemination or exchange of knowledge (explicit and tacit) from one individual to another individual or group of people”. Moreover, librarians have a positive attitude towards knowledge sharing and believe that knowledge sharing improves the learning process and individual competencies as well as enhance the efficiency of library operations and services. Furthermore, email was found as the most preferred communication channel because of its accessibility, convenience, and personal warmness. Conspicuously, public recognition, rewards, knowledge self-efficacy and develop relations with colleagues were identified as key motivators and on the contrary, lack of trust, personal animosity, technological support and nepotism were found to be the major barriers for knowledge sharing practices. The findings of this study may be useful to the university authorities in India in designing and implementing an all-inclusive knowledge sharing strategy for LIS professionals.

The process of technology transfer is complex and involves a series of factors and variables. Within this process, it is common that transferor and transferee might face several barriers. Furthermore, processes involving innovation and technology transfer must consider the impacts for the sustainable development. Taking these aspects into account, this paper aims to identify the barriers and opportunities in technology transfer oriented to sustainable development. To reach this goal, a systematic review of literature was carried out using the methodology Methodi Ordinatio. A portfolio composed of 107 scientific articles was built. The results demonstrate the main barriers, among which we can mention unavailability of financial resources or subsidies to obtain or implement a certain technology, and bureaucracy to obtain these resources. On the other hand, some opportunities can also be found, like Clean Development Mechanism and policies and regulations that favour the adoption and diffusion of clean technologies. Thus, this paper contributes to the academy by exploring the interconnections of Technology Transfer and Sustainable Development in the literature. This paper also contributes to the presentation of knowledge resources — information regarding barriers and opportunities to technology transfer oriented to sustainable development — so that governments and decision makers could define policies and strategies for a more effective process.

The aim of study is to prioritize resilient capabilities required for an Industry 4.0 manufacturing business. These capabilities are prioritized considering the barriers faced by their supply chains in becoming resilient. After the review of literature and discussion with experts from the case company and other supply chain professionals, the barriers and resilient capabilities were shortlisted. The study utilized a hybrid of AHP-fuzzy TOPSIS technique to provide weights to the criteria variables (here barriers) and rank the alternatives (here resilient capabilities). Five criteria of barriers were identified for the purpose of the study, namely, strategic barriers, technological barriers, cultural barriers, individual barriers, and organizational barriers. Twenty-three subcriteria were identified for these barriers. Six capabilities were decided upon to be prioritized out of which planning capabilities were obtained to be the most important followed by collaborative, agile, supply chain design modification capability, interoperability, and supply flexibility. The study attempts to fill the gap identified in the literature regarding the lack of studies on supply chain resilience barriers. It therefore provides a realistic framework to prioritize the resilience capabilities required for mitigating such barriers.

In the present era of vulnerabilities, the concept of the resilient supply chain has appeared to be the most promising and efficient tool to adapt and recover from significant disruptions. Though enormous research is available regarding the capabilities and practices that enable the resilient supply chain’s success, little consideration is given to the barriers that inhibit its successful implementation in the actual scenario. In this research, we have identified 14 critical barriers to resilient supply chain in the context of the Indian manufacturing supply chain. Further, we have used an integrated Fuzzy-DEMATEL approach to evaluate these barriers. The findings reveal that lack of managerial commitment is among the most influencing barriers to the resilient supply chain, followed by poor risk awareness and poor information sharing. This research enables the academicians to understand the resilient supply chain’s various capabilities, practices and barriers and provides a novel approach for quantitative analysis of the subjective parameters. Moreover, the findings enable the supply chain practitioners to allocate the resources and capabilities that mitigate the barriers and make the supply chain genuinely resilient.

Today, data are increasing in importance for firms trying to create and maintain a competitive advantage. As value creation is highly dependent on this key resource, data, the necessity of re-designing firms’ business models arises. By conducting and analyzing 58 in-depth interviews, we contribute a distinct set of barriers to data-driven business model innovation showing how data-related, technology-related, aversions and regulatory hurdles are the most challenging. Based on six focus groups that discussed these findings, participants identified the necessity for a change in companies’ firm-centered perspectives on business. Hence, we propose a model of data-driven business ecosystems that aims to provide guidance for conducting successful business in a data-driven world.

While information technology (IT) has grown rapidly in enterprises, scholars have emphasized the importance of IT factors and aspects, while limited attention has been paid to the barriers and challenges facing the adoption of IT. In light of this, we stress the importance of barriers inhibiting IT adoption within Small and Medium Enterprises (SME). For this purpose, this paper aims to create a systematic literature review in order to provide a better understanding of barriers to IT adoption within SME. On the basis of 132 selected studies, we identify 18 barriers categorized according to internal and external parameters. Finally, we underline a synthesis and avenues for future research, and provide scientific and managerial implications and guidance for the adoption of IT in SME.

There is no consensus in the literature on how to apply Lean Product Development (LPD) successfully. This paper presents a literature review aiming to fill this gap. The key success factors in and barriers to successful implementation of LPD were gathered and categorized by means of a thematic reading. The question of the context’s influence on these factors is also posed, and a proposition is made to prioritize the notion of configurations rather than frameworks. From an academic perspective, this research gives an overview of the LPD implementation’s key factors and opens up a discussion on the pertinence of the notion of framework in this field. On the practitioner side, this paper helps organizations to reflect on the main factors to consider when implementing LPD.

The issue of the cooperation of private industrial firms with universities and the relevant transfer of knowledge is discussed here with special reference to the problems and opportunities that small and medium size enterprises face in such cases. A typology of barriers and facilitators within a broad network framework provides a structural approach to the description of these problems and opportunities. The longitudinal investigation of a case study enables an in-depth consideration of the evolution of barriers and facilitators of collaboration over time. The case indicates a fluid pattern of knowledge generation, transmission and absorption, which is then compared to (and contrasted with) the findings of the existing literature.

This paper explores the front end innovation activities in a multinational Global Healthcare Company (GHC). A questionnaire was designed and distributed to front end innovators from 20 operating companies to understand team composition, essential skill sets, and the methodology used to assess customer needs, generate ideas, and define the selection criteria used during the go/no go decision. For each category the current state and best practice (based on the views of the individual respondents) for front end innovation was analyzed and reported in this paper. The results of this study reflect the opinions and suggestions of 37 respondents (23 that were at directorship level or above). These results were amalgamated and used to develop existing models of innovation to produce a framework (termed the Total Front End Framework (TFEF)) that should be useful for both senior managers and innovation teams to optimize their activities and increase the efficiency of the innovation process.

Business model innovations are recognised as a key to the creation of sustainable business, but their adoption by firms has been slow. Organisations can only be sustainable when the whole societal system is sustainable. Both structural and cultural changes are required to facilitate firm- and system-level sustainability. The central idea of this paper is to examine how societal transition towards sustainable business models (SBMs) can be achieved. Through a qualitative Delphi study, we assess and categorise the key structural and cultural barriers to sustainable business model innovation (SBMI). By applying the innovation system approach, we explain how to overcome existing barriers by strengthening the functions of the innovation system. We analyse how these barriers can be overcome through the activities of governments, firms, and consumers, and discuss the wider implications of our research for practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers.

The aim of this paper is to explore innovative behaviour of Indian Micro Small and Medium Enterprises. It is interesting to study innovative behaviour of microsmau and medium enterprises (MSMEs) since they try to innovate while surrounded by many barriers. They also face high failure rate in doing so. This failure is due to presence of barriers that MSMEs fail to manage. But it has been observed that many MSMEs are now awakening to their potential and becoming innovative. They tend to respond to environmental factors in an innovative way, either by cutting cost or changing ways of management. This innovative way defines their innovative behaviour. The innovative behaviour of MSMEs is studied through three variables, i.e., size, age and barriers faced by them. The result shows that size does influence innovation activities undertaken by MSMEs and statistically, there is no correlation between age and innovative behaviour. Their innovative behaviour is affected by barriers like shortage of technical skilled manpower, technology and shortage of funds or complex funding procedure. The paper is concluded by summarising the key findings, discussing implications, limitations and further scope of study.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the difficulties that industry in general and agri-food firms in particular have when it comes to innovating. The focus of this analysis is temporal and it covers the periods 2004, 2008 and 2012. This allows assessing whether these difficulties have intensified, declined or remained stable. To this end, we have applied correspondence analysis, multivariate technique similar to principal components analysis designed to explore relationships among categorical variables. We have used the PITEC database, the Spanish component of the Community Innovation Survey from Eurostat. The results are differentiated according to ownership of the company. Finally, the results obtained for the industry in general and agri-food companies are compared. In both cases, the innovation has been affected by the economic crisis, but agri-food companies have performed better than other sectors, although the significance of the economic and financial obstacles depends on the characteristics of the company, its ownership and origin of capital.

Creativity has been identified as a critical activity in distributed product development. Various methods and tools support distributed product development and distributed teams in general, but none with a focus on creative problem solving. To tackle this challenge, a systematic literature review has been conducted to gather the influencing factors on distributed creativity to be used as a starting point for supporting creativity in distributed product development teams. Within this submission, an impact model is developed, focusing on the success factors of creativity. Furthermore, the interconnection between the factors is modelled. Barriers to creative problem solving are included as well but will be the focus of a following publication.

This paper examines the barriers to the benefits, efficient and effective implementation of Environmental Financial Assurance (EFA) policy in developing countries with Ghana as case study. EFA is an international environmental regulatory policy and its implementation by a nation is thus perceived as integration into the international regulatory framework. It is an essential developmental regulatory policy that protects the public against the cost of mine clean up and loss of livelihoods, should a company refuse to complete its reclamation plan. However, evidence drawn from this study indicates that there are barriers and differences in approach to the efficient implementation of the policy in some developing countries as the zeal with which EFA policy was adopted as part of a policy reform to attract foreign investment to the mining sector has not been matched with the desired political will, expertise and economic growth to ensure the implementation of the policy.

This paper aims at supplying a decision support system tool to investors having options written on an underlying asset driven by a fractional Brownian motion (fBm). The results presented here rely on the theory of nonlinear transformations of fBm and provide the calculus of the probability estimate that the underlying asset crosses nonlinear barriers. Recent results stating a Black and Scholes-like pricing formula for fBm monitor the expected behaviour of options on the basis of the dynamics of the underlying asset. We rely on the results drawn for plain vanilla options, leaving their extension to barrier options for future work. The theory of speculative bubbles due to endogenous causes provides a useful suggestion for the detection of periods in which these results should be used. The application of the above results is shown through the NASDAQ case study.

The implementation of mitigation policies will be complicated by several real-world imperfections ("second-best conditions") and constraints typically not included in the more idealized economies assumed in Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), based on which such policies are derived. But which of these numerous imperfections found in real economies are actually relevant in this context? And how could they — in principle — be taken into account by IAMs? Based on a literature review, we propose a typology of three categories of obstacles inhibiting "first-best" conditions and outcomes: first, obstacles impeding the setting of least-cost abatement incentives; second, obstacles limiting the supply and exploitation of abatement options; and, third, obstacles creating distortions between the price and marginal costs of abatement. By reviewing the implementation of energy policy in China, we put our typology into practice and identify specific empirical evidence for each category. IAMs in principle can (and in practice often do) incorporate several relevant obstacles by means of additional cost or quantity constraints. However, the nature of some obstacles relating to strategic interactions between economic agents appears to be incompatible with the standard representative agent social-planner framework often employed in IAMs, suggesting a need for complementary analysis with decentralized "Integrated Policy Assessment Models".

Barriers to climate change adaptation have received increased attention in recent years as researchers and policymakers attempt to understand their complex and interdependent nature and identify strategies for overcoming them. To date however, there is a paucity of research on barriers to transformative adaptation. Using two case studies of flood risk management from Ireland we identify and characterize barriers to transformative adaptation. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders connected to proposed transformative strategies in Skibbereen, County Cork and Clontarf, County Dublin. Across both case studies, where transformative strategies failed to materialize, we highlight three significant barriers that impede transformation including: (i) social and cultural values, particularly place attachment and identity; (ii) institutional reliance on technical expertise which fails to look beyond traditional technocratic approaches and; (iii) institutional regulatory practices. Findings illustrate that where social or institutional barriers emerge, transformation may more likely succeed through a series of incremental changes. This research has practical implications for future adaptation planning as facilitating transformation through incrementalism requires flexible adaptation strategies that are responsive to changing social values over time. While focused on flood risk management, our findings have applicability for other sectors adapting to climate change.