Accessibility and Product Ecosystems

Products, including assistive and accessible technologies, do not exist in isolation. They are all part of rich product ecosystems; they inhabit specific niches of economics, functionality, and technology, and they interact with other products. The concept of product ecosystem goes beyond technological interoperability. For accessibility to advance, we must understand more about the interactions among products. This article sketches an explanatory approach that may be useful in understanding how accessible technologies thrive, survive, or fail within their ecosystems.     

Exploring the duality between product and organizational architectures: A test of the “mirroring” hypothesis

A variety of academic studies argue that a relationship exists between the structure of an organization and the design of the products that this organization produces. Specifically, products tend to “mirror” the architectures of the organizations in which they are developed. This dynamic occurs because the organization's governance structures, problem solving routines and communication patterns constrain the space in which it searches for new solutions. Such a relationship is important, given that product architecture has been shown to be an important predictor of product performance, product variety, process flexibility and even the path of industry evolution.We explore this relationship in the software industry. Our research takes advantage of a natural experiment, in that we observe products that fulfill the same function being developed by very different organizational forms. At one extreme are commercial software firms, in which the organizational participants are tightly-coupled, with respect to their goals, structure and behavior. At the other, are open source software communities, in which the participants are much more loosely-coupled by comparison. The mirroring hypothesis predicts that these different organizational forms will produce products with distinctly different architectures. Specifically, loosely-coupled organizations will develop more modular designs than tightly-coupled organizations. We test this hypothesis, using a sample of matched-pair products.We find strong evidence to support the mirroring hypothesis. In all of the pairs we examine, the product developed by the loosely-coupled organization is significantly more modular than the product from the tightly-coupled organization. We measure modularity by capturing the level of coupling between a product's components. The magnitude of the differences is substantial—up to a factor of six, in terms of the potential for a design change in one component to propagate to others. Our results have significant managerial implications, in highlighting the impact of organizational design decisions on the technical structure of the artifacts that these organizations subsequently develop.     

传统民间工艺融入现代产品设计原则分析

将传统民间工艺科学合理地融入现代产品设计,既对提高现代产品的历史文化价值、满足消费者的物质消费与精神文化需求尤为重要,又对塑造中国特色民族品牌、努力开拓国际市场、加快“走出去”有积极的现实意义。传统民间工艺与现代产品设计在功能上侧重实用性、服务对象大众化、艺术表现形式上的多样化等方面存在密切共同点和关联性,为传统民间工艺融入现代产品设计提供可行性。设计师将传统民间工艺融入现代产品设计时应注意把握生态设计、化繁入简、语境相符原则。     

数字创新生态系统：理论构建与未来研究

数字化重塑了创新主体之间的价值共创方式,拓展了现有创新生态系统理论,引发关于数字创新生态系统的思考。本文提出数字创新生态系统的两种表现形式：创新导向的数字生态系统（又称“数字创新生态系统Ⅰ型”）以及数字赋能的创新生态系统（又称“数字创新生态系统Ⅱ型”）。创新导向型的数字生态系统旨在促进数字创新的产生、应用与扩散,这一围绕数字主体而形成的创新生态系统延续了数字生态系统收敛性、可扩展性、自生长性和模块性的基本特征。数字赋能的创新生态系统是数字化进程与创新主体间价值共创行为深度融合的结果,实现了创新生态系统内主体、结构、制度、功能和演进的数字化转型。数字创新生态系统Ⅰ型与Ⅱ型彼此渗透、相互促进,改进了创新主体之间的价值共创方式,推动了创新能力与创新效能的全面提升。最后,建议未来研究从案例分析、形成机制分析、发展战略分析、政策研究和监测研究等方面来健全和完善数字创新生态系统理论。     

产品工艺与审美之关联

产品工艺是产品生产过程中的关键组成部分．也是塑造产品外形的主要途径。简单来讲,产品工艺与审美之间保持着天然的联系。文章首先阐释了产品工艺的基本概念,提出不同产品的工艺条件对于产品造型和功能有着一定的影响,在此基础上提出了不同时期人们审美倾向对于不同产品提出相应的工艺诉求的结论,很好地阐释了产品工艺对于审美的重要意义。     

How does competition influence innovative effort within a platform-based ecosystem? Contrasting paid and unpaid contributors

Unpaid individuals are an important source of contributions to many ecosystems. An understudied phenomenon is how such contributions are shaped by competition. In this paper, we study how the rate and type of new product creation are shaped by competition. We contrast its impact on “paid” developers that profit by selling their products to that on “unpaid” developers that release their software for free. Using a hand-collected dataset on the jailbreak ecosystem, we find that increasing competition has a stronger negative effect on the rate of innovation by paid developers than that of unpaid developers. We also find that increasing competition is associated with a reduction in the reuse of existing technological components by unpaid developers, relative to paid developers, suggesting that the types of products developed also shift as competition increases. The results suggest that competition has an important role in shaping innovation in platform-based ecosystems, but that it differs for paid and unpaid contributors.     

跨领域技术融合对企业新产品开发绩效的影响

技术融合是指原本相互独立的技术跨越其边界相互交叉渗透从而催生出新兴技术的现象，作为产业变革的核心动力其被认为是促进新兴产业形成及新产品开发的重要因素。本研究通过收集中国新能源汽车产业所有企业在2005至2017关于新产品的面板数据，通过专利IPC号的耦合结构与替代关系分别对互补性和替代性技术融合进行测度，并采用负二项固定效应回归模型，实证分析了跨领域技术融合与企业新产品开发绩效之间的关系。研究结果表明：当企业聚焦于特定领域采取替代性技术融合时，替代性技术融合强度越大越有利于提升企业新产品数量及新产品进入市场的速度；而当企业跨越多个领域采取互补性技术融合时，一开始有利于提升企业新产品数量及新产品进入市场的速度，但后期将不利于企业新产品数量与新产品进入市场速度的进一步提升。     

QFD在卷烟产品属性设计中的应用

卷烟产品作为一种特殊的消费品,其产品属性设计水平是满足卷烟产品消费需求的重要因素.将QFD方法应用于卷烟开发过程,形成一种新的卷烟产品属性设计方法,就是针对目标市场构建消费者需求与产品属性的关联矩阵,从而将消费者需求转化为具体的设计要求,为产品开发提供指导;还结合G公司JS新产品开发的实际情景,设计JS新产品的产品属性目标水平,初步表明该方法有助于提高产品开发效率.     

产品设计课程教学新思路

产品设计课程通过产品设计流程的学习,使学生能够较全面掌握产品的各种设计方法。笔者根据多年的教学经验与设计实践经验,以案例教学法为切入点,教会学生面对同一目标产品的不同设计约束条件,分别进行改良设计和创新设计的思路。只有不断改进授课方法,在实践中不断探索,才能够培养出符合社会需求和市场需求的专业设计人才。     

Exploiting user experience from online customer reviews for product design

Understanding user experience (UX) becomes more important in a market-driven design paradigm because it helps designers uncover significant factors, such as user’s preference, usage context, product features, as well as their interrelations. Conventional means, such as questionnaire, survey and self-report with predefined questions and prompts, are used to collect information about users’ experience during various UX studies. However, such data is often limited and restricted by initial setups, and they won’t easily allow designers to identify all critical elements such as user profile, context, related product features, etc. Meanwhile, with widely accessible social media, the volume and velocity of customer-generated data are fast-increasing. While it is generally acknowledged that such data contains important elements in understanding and analyzing UX, extracting them to assist product design remains a challenging issue. In this study, how UX data underlying product design can be isolated and restored from customer online reviews is examined. A faceted conceptual model is proposed to elucidate the crucial factors of UX, which serves as an operational mechanism connecting to product design. A methodology of establishing a UX knowledge base from customer online reviews is then proposed to support UX-centered design activities, which consists of three stages, i.e., UX discovery to extract UX data from a single review, UX data integration to group similar data and UX network formalization to build up the causal dependencies among UX groups. Using a case study on smart mobile phone reviews, examples of UX data discovered are demonstrated and both customers and designers concerned key product features and usage situations are exemplified. This study explores the feasibility to discover valuable UX data as well as their relations automatically for product design and business strategic plan by analyzing a large volume of customer online data.     

A blockchain use case in food distribution: Do you know where your food has been?

This paper aims to explain the implementation of blockchain technology in the production and supply chain delivery system for eggs from farm to consumer by a company based in the Midwestern USA. One of the primary research questions answered is how blockchain can be utilized and applied to more accurately and transparently move goods through global supply chains. This company is at the forefront of developing such systems for use in industry, and a use case for egg distribution is detailed. The goal is to track products from farm to fork using blockchain and internet of things (IoT) enabled technologies. By creating traceable and transparent supply chains for food, consumers can attain the information they need to make informed choices about the food they buy and the companies they support. For stakeholders in the food supply chain, having traceability and transparency builds better relationships with their customers, increases efficiency, and reduces the risk and cost of food recalls, fraud, and product loss. The blockchain technology and this business are creating a case for fixing and transforming the world’s food system.     

中兴通讯技术创新能力的培育和建设

高科技企业,面临技术的飞速发展和行业的激烈竞争,必须不断培育和促进公司的整体技术创新能力,形成以企业为主体的技术创新体系,在逐步实现由技术追随型企业向技术领先型企业转变的同时,瞄准国际化方向。并要立足掌握核心技术,致力于新技术的研究跟踪和新产品的研发,保持领先优势,才能不断提升产品竞争能力和赢利能力。     

基于QFD和案例推理的绿色产品设计方案选择研究

应用QFD和案例推理的思想,利用通过QFD方法形成的质量特性及其权重来评价备选的绿色产品设计方案,然后检索出与决策者期望之间相似性最大的绿色产品设计方案。结果表明基于QFD方法可以有效地构建绿色产品设计方案中的指标体系和指标权重。此外案例推理是一种有效的绿色产品设计方案选择方法。可根据实际情况,进行绿色产品设计方案选择,具有一定的实用价值。     

Moving skills from hands to heads: does importing technology affect export performance in textiles?

This paper examines the link between imported technologies and a country’s export performance, as measured by product quality. The analysis is set in the background of the process of regional integration between the European Union (EU) and its neighbouring developing countries. The underlying question is whether trade integration fosters or dampens learning and technological upgrading. We find that unit values of exports from these countries to the EU rose steadily between 1988 and 1996, relative to the unit values of world exports to Europe. If increases in unit values satisfactorily proxy increases in product quality, then trade integration has fostered product upgrading and technological learning in the sample countries. We find that imported technologies and other sources of knowledge have a strong bearing on this pattern. Technological inflows are captured by the degree of involvement of European companies in export flows from our sample countries (outward processing trade (OPT)) and by the skill content of the machines imported.Non-technical abstractTrade and greater economic integration affect the upgrading of technologies in less advanced areas. The open questions pertain to the direction of such change and to the channels through which technologies are transmitted. This paper explores the role of a few different channels for importing technologies and their impact on export performance. The study is set in the context of the process of economic integration between the EU and its neighbouring developing countries, in particular Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) and the Southern Mediterranean Countries (SMCs).New potential sources of technological inputs become available with declining trade barriers. Some of these technological inputs are deliberately purchased (new machines, foreign investments, skilled personnel) and others are acquired through spillovers, by trading with more technologically advanced partners, by gathering information in foreign markets, by learning from sophisticated imported goods.In the present paper export performance is defined in terms of the quality of exported products, on the presumption that higher quality products imply the use of more complex technologies and have a strong learning potential. We find that unit values of exports from the sample countries to the EU rose steadily between 1988 and 1996, relative to the unit values of world exports to Europe.We then investigate whether imported technologies and other sources of knowledge have some bearing on this pattern. Particular attention is devoted to the technologies embodied in the machines. We develop a measure of technological complexity of the machines imported related to the level of skills required to use them. We also jointly estimate the role of outward processing trade which indirectly captures foreign investments and other forms of involvement of European firms in our sample countries.These channels of technological imports appear to have a statistically discernible and positive role on product quality for all the countries analysed. Imported machines are the most important determinant of product upgrading in the SMCs, while foreign firms play a dominant role in the CEECs.This result is consistent with stylised facts. The pattern of trade liberalisation and specialisation was quite different for the two groups of countries. In the CEECs liberalisation was sudden and drastic. Trade patterns changed considerably, both in terms of products and market destination. Foreign companies are playing a crucial role in this pattern of transition. In the SMCs things have been smoother. Trade is being liberalised more gradually and many of these countries have a strong specialisation in textiles. Although based on imported technologies, upgrading and learning appears to be rooted in the local production structure rather than being channelled by foreign companies.     

基于顾客需求的数显卡尺产品设计研究

伴随着科学的发展,企业面临的环境更加的复杂,要使得企业在市场竞争中脱颖而出,则需要进行产品的创新设计。如何以顾客需求为导向进行产品设计则是企业应该思考的问题。质量功能展开技术（QFD）作为一种传统产品设计工具在产品设计中已有很高的地位,它是强调以顾客需求为导向,将顾客的需求贯穿于产品设计的始终。而价值工程（VE）理论作为一种产品功能的分析工具,能将功能需求进行合理的转化为产品的零部件要求。两者的基础都以功能需求导向,能更好的将顾客的需求体现在产品设计中。二者有机的结合能消除产品质量的隐患,提高产品的核心竞争力。     

双责任闭环供应链生态设计策略及其差异化影响

考虑生态设计降低产品制造成本、提高产品销量和提高废旧产品回收率3种生态设计策略,采用斯坦伯格博弈方法,面向产品生态设计和废旧产品回收的双责任闭环供应链,探究不同生态设计策略对企业的双责任行为、利润和环境等的影响。研究结果表明,在不同生态设计策略下,制造商的生态设计水平对零售商决策的影响范围、影响方向和影响力度具差异性;消费者价格敏感度与产品回收市场收益是影响双责任闭环供应链决策和制造商生态设计策略选择的关键要素;生态设计要素和固定成本要素对企业双责任行为、产品批发价和零售价产生不同影响。根据研究结论,提出从促进闭环供应链履行双责任视角,制造商应根据闭环供应链层面市场特征的变化而选择不同的生态设计策略。     

面向产品概念设计的用户需求目标体系

在产品的研发阶段加强对产品概念属性组合的设计评估,以减少设计环节、明确设计方向,快速高效地转化用户需求目标来满足消费者的需求.文章分析了联合-层次分析在用户需求目标转化中的应用技术,提出了基于联合层次分析的用户需求目标体系的构建方法.     

获取新技术是否以提高中国的产品质量？以企业层次的面板数据为依据

随着众多发展中国家逐渐打开国门开展贸易交流,这些国家中的很多工业企业发现由于自身产品质量与品种的贫乏,很难在国际上参与竞争。尽管中国自1996年以来一直是全球最大的粗钢生产国,但随着本国钢材采购商对钢材质量要求的逐步提升,中国钢材企业低质量钢材的生产已经过剩。本文使用了企业层次的中国钢材企业的面板数据,计量分析了影响企业采用新技术提高产品质量的两套可能因素的相对重要性,它们分别为：技术获取因素与技术吸收能力因素。另外,研究发现一些诸如内部R＆D与国外知识等技术补充必须与技术相结合以提高中国企业的产品质量。     

中国生态系统碳汇功能提升的技术途径：基于自然解决方案

2030年前碳达峰、2060年前碳中和已被确定为中国经济社会发展的重要战略目标。当前,中国陆地生态系统碳汇能力约为每年10亿—13亿吨二氧化碳（CO₂）。巩固和提升生态碳汇功能,需要与国土空间规划和生态保护等相结合,稳定现有森林、草原、湿地、滨海碳碳汇,进而实施生态保护与修复等重大增汇工程,同时还需要推动生态系统管理及新型生物/生态碳捕集、利用与封存技术（Bio-CCUS/Eco-CCUS）的开发应用。通过统筹陆地-河流-海洋国土空间规划和各种增汇技术,有望实现中国区域生态系统自然和人为碳汇功能倍增目标,即在2050—2060年实现每年20亿—25亿吨CO₂的碳汇贡献。当前,亟待系统梳理生态系统碳汇提升关键技术,科学评估其增汇效应、经济可行性和时间可持续性,集成不同区域增汇技术并开展区域示范。     

中国制造企业的低端突破路径演化研究

经济全球化与信息化等新技术情境的纵深嵌入,拓展并延伸了后发国家企业的低端突破方向与路径。通过对国内外相关研究的梳理发现,当前分析多从宏观层面进行理论推演,识别出“低端锁定”的影响因素或低端突破的潜在路径,并辅以部分产业或代工企业的实证检验,但对于诠释后发情境下中国企业怎样摆脱被“俘获”、“锁定”于低端环节,缺乏对微观层面突破机理的深入系统探析。本研究未局限于全球价值链（GVC）情境下代工企业的低端突破研究范畴,而是从微观层面的简单产品和复杂产品两种不同产品类型的视角切入,对深度嵌入全球价值链的汽车零部件代表企业万向集团和作为机车行业国内价值链（NVC）中链主企业的中车大连机车车辆有限公司进行了纵贯式案例分析。研究发现,以简单产品和复杂产品为起点的两类企业,虽因不同嵌入情境下价值链治理结构与产品定位差异导致二者低端突破过程各有侧重,但均在“接受定义→合作定义→主动定义”的定义延伸演化规律下,通过向垂直链条与水平链条两个方向交替进行定位跃升,从而摆脱低附加值与低端技术的锁定风险。可以说,双重维度下的复合路径选择是中国制造企业实现低端突破的关键所在。本文的研究结论从机理层面析出企业实现低端突破的路径选择与演化规律,对于复杂转型情境下产品类型各异的后发国家制造企业更具普适性与解释力。