Narrow Results

This chapter examines abstract concepts of innovators' competences and innovation culture. For people to be innovative, both concepts need to be considered. Ontologies provide a way to specify these abstract concepts into such a format that practical applications can be applied in organizations. Self-evaluation of innovation competence and innovation culture in organizations can be conducted by utilizing a fuzzy logic application platform called Evolute. The approach described in this chapter has management implications. The abstract concepts of innovation culture and innovation competence become manageable, which suggests that organizations should be able to get better innovation results.

Cultural variations across countries are considered a major factor affecting customers' readiness to adopt, use, and evaluate technology. Relevant contributions from marketing studies, computer science, and international business are integrated into the literature of cross-cultural management and technology acceptance, and a conceptual model is developed. Drawing on a broader research project on radio frequency identification (RFID) aimed at supporting intelligent business networking and innovative customer services, the development of the framework is informed by the authors' work in the preparation of an RFID-based application at several established grocery retailers for short-life products in Ireland and in Greece. From the findings of our exploratory study, it emerges that low uncertainty avoidance, low institutional collectivism, high in-group collectivism, high gender egalitarianism, and low humane orientation are conducive to greater customers' acceptance of new service technologies. Managerial implications and directions for future research are discussed.