International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management

Innovation is of vital importance, not only to commercial companies, but also to governments. For the Dutch, innovation in the field of water management is even a matter of survival, because much of their country lies below sea level. An evaluation of a water innovation program carried out by the Dutch government, using the cyclic innovation model, shows that there is a broad understanding of innovation, that innovators see innovation as a significant break from the "old" and recognize the connection between innovation and future developments, but that, on the other hand, the innovation processes in the innovation program are quite informal, that outside partners are involved sufficiently adhere to the new paradigm of "open innovation, and that the connection with top management at Rijkswaterstaat (as part of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment) could be improved. It is advised, among others, to make a clear distinction between projects and innovation processes, and to adopt a contingency approach to make that different types of innovations (incremental versus radical) are managed differently.

This paper examines how a sectoral innovation system evolves over time and what the underlying factors derive from the development of automotive industry in Thailand which is presented as a case example. Since 1960's, the government policies and the development of liberal investment climate have been a push for the influx of large-scale foreign direct investments (FDI) in Thailand. Automotive industry has also been targeted as a major assembly base of foreign carmakers while the local suppliers were mostly slow and passive learners. In the late- 1990's, foreign carmakers began acting as "lead" firms to invest in R&D and related activities. This induced positive coevolution in other actors, especially the first-tier foreign suppliers and some local suppliers, in the sectoral innovation systems which, in turn, became stronger, more coherent and product-specific. According to Thailand Automotive Institute (TAI), the production volume is expected to grow to two million units by 2015 which would bring Thailand to be on the top-ten list of the largest auto-producers in the world. This research paper has implications on the concept of sectoral innovation system, corporate technology strategies and government technology and innovation policies.

The development and growth of Taiwan's industries, especially the semiconductor and electronics industries, has been emphasizing overwhelmingly on cost-leadership innovation and strategy. Although such capital-intensive, volume-driven and cost-down strategies have been successfully measured by industrial and economic growth, the amounts of value created and captured in global value chain and innovation networks are insignificant. We apply the framework of creation and capture of value to analyze the industrial value creation strategy in newly industrialized countries for the last four decades. We examine their past industrial policy and business strategy, and argue that the transformation of policy and strategy must gear toward creating and capturing higher value in the global innovation network. Several managerial and policy implications are also discussed.

Over the past decades, technology management (TM) has gradually become an academic discipline. Many aspects of TM are worthy of study. This paper will introduce how the social network analysis (SNS) applies on the TM studies. We also briefly introduce some of the network analysis on technological studies.

Recently, social media has become a key platform that allowed people to interact and share information. The use of social media is expanding significantly and can serve a variety of purposes. Over the last few years, users of social media have played an increasing role in the dissemination of emergency and disaster information. In this paper, we conduct a case study exploring how Thai people used social media such as Twitter in response to one of the country's worst disasters in recent history: the 2011 Thai Flood. We combine multiple analysis methods in this study, including content analysis of Twitter messages, trend analysis of different message categories, and influential Twitter users analysis. This study helps us understand the role of social media in time of natural disaster.

Technology acquisition plays a key role in the management of technology in industrial organizations. While there are ample theoretical and empirical researches on firm technology acquisition which are focused on the study of its dependence on other components of organization, the literature pays less attention to explore and analyze the inter-relatedness found in the main body of technology acquisition itself. Internal and external technology acquisitions are among the main substitute modes which are embodied in the general body of firm's innovation and technology acquisition strategy. In this research, we deploy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) as a powerful structural modeling technique to identify and visualize the causalities between internal and external modes of technology acquisition by processing the collective knowledge and expertise of firms' managerial boards and senior technology experts. Then, an integrated structure could be introduced for the macro-level technology acquisition and in addition to the mathematical modeling of causalities between internal and external modes of technology acquisition, a decision support system could be presented.

In times of changing business models and international competition, there is an inherent need for companies to foster and develop mechanisms to absorb new technologies for innovative products and processes effectively. Such considerations lead to the strategic make-or-buy decision which was the subject of our research. This quantitative explanatory study in the German industry shows in particular that companies base their decision for internal or external sourcing on multiple weighted criteria with scoring models and, even more common, with portfolio matrices. These results are in common with recent research, however, other results are surprising, e.g. just a small minority of companies involve people from controlling and legal departments in these decision processes. The paper also reveals differences between companies with different timing and competitive strategies, which are in line with the proposed characteristics of these strategic focuses in literature. Implications for theory and practice are given to foster future research in this area.

This paper maps the diffusion dynamics of smart meters in the Central and Eastern Europe (EU10) and develops methodology which assesses the potential drivers of diffusion by the means of thematic analysis. Innovation diffusion theory and the concept of rate of adoption enabled to measure the speed of smart meter diffusion throughout the time in individual countries and the whole region, which is subsequently benchmarked against the market leaders. Results indicate that large-scale rollouts of smart meters are preceded by pilot projects, cost–benefit analysis, regulations, and initiatives. Furthermore, the role of state decreases with gradual development of the market.

The purpose of this study is to explore how Turkish companies are implementing information technology (IT) governance to achieve desirable behavior in the use of IT. A literature-based integrated IT management model (IITMM) is developed. Research objectives further include a high-level assessment of organizations' perceived level of IT governance capabilities by applying the proposed IITMM.

The IITMM discusses the IT governance literature in three management levels (i.e. normative, strategic and operational) and in three management dimensions (i.e. goals, structures and behaviors). The model was applied to five companies from Turkish automotive supply industry. Based on the IITMM, a questionnaire was developed to provide a structured interview pattern for face-to-face interviews. An interview with a business or IT executive was conducted in each company.

Results of the study revealed that except strategic goals and operational goals, different IT governance capability patterns exist for each company. Although the strategic goals and operational goals of IT governance are well understood by all participating companies, there is a room for improvement in structures and behaviors dimensions, especially in normative behaviors and strategic behaviors, as well as in strategic structures and operational structures. In addition, specific IT governance constructs are identified as drivers or inhibitors of effective IT governance implementation. Finally, some IT governance mechanisms, such as IT control framework, independent assurance, IT project management, committees and councils, IT principles and end-user involvement in determining IT strategies, were perceived as not effectively implemented. In summary, the results indicate that the IITMM provides a useful framework for determining the current IT governance capabilities of companies considering model's ability to recognize different levels of capabilities and to identify general and specific improvement opportunities.