Trademarks’ relatedness to product and service innovation: A branding strategy approach

The use of trademark data in innovation studies is still limited because as yet no guidelines exist to ascertain which trademarks relate to innovation. This paper proposes that a branding strategy approach may help to identify innovation related trademarks. Companies use distinctive branding strategies for innovation and these branding strategies have important consequences for the design of new trademarks and their application scope. Based on a sample of Benelux and Community trademarks, we find that trademarks for brand creation relate more often to product innovation. In addition, we find negative effects of a trademark’s industry scope on its relatedness to product innovation, and of a trademark’s geographic scope on its relatedness to service innovation. Our findings bear several key implications for further research towards identifying innovation-related trademarks from a branding strategy perspective.     

Switching PDC control for discrete-time T–S fuzzy system: A membership function ranking approach

In this paper, a new type of switched parallel distributed compensation (PDC) controller is presented, in which a novel switching scheme, namely, membership function ranking (MFR) scheme is proposed. The MFR scheme can be viewed as an improvement and extension of previous results named largest membership function (LMF) scheme concerned with piece-wise quadratic Lyapunov function (PQLF) approach, since it provides a denser subdivision of normalized membership function space and therefore essentially yields less conservative results. Moreover, it shows that MFR scheme covers LMF scheme as a particular case. Based on MFR scheme, a family of _?∞${\mathbf{?}}_{\infty }$ controllers and a switching scheme is designed to ensure the closed-loop system asymptotically stable and has a required _?∞${\mathbf{?}}_{\infty }$ performance. A design example is presented to illustrate the advantages of MFR scheme.     

Can media forecast technological progress?: A text-mining approach to the on-line newspaper and blog's representation of prospective industrial technologies

This article critically assesses the utility of both personal blog and mass media (on-line newspaper)’s coverage of future technology in forecasting the prospect of industrial technology. By analyzing the statistical pattern of the South Korean media salience in 13 novel industrial technologies in 2015, the study argues that the mass media is more biased than aggregated blogs in depicting promising new technology. In doing so, the authors present a methodical pathway to address the bias with acceleration and skewness index. The article also applies semantic network analysis for the collected textual data of blogs to represent and interpret people's perspective of industrial technologies. By extracting key concepts from PBS index and merging semantic networks of the 13 technologies, the study derives a key insight that nurturing expertise in the coming era of artificial intelligence and robot would become crucial to integrate key technological competence.     

The capability approach and the ‘medium of choice’: steps towards conceptualising information and communication technologies for development

Amartya Sen’s capability approach has become increasingly popular in development studies. This paper identifies controllability and operationalisability as two key stumbling blocks which prevent the capability approach from being used even more widely in development practice. It discusses the origins and application of the Choice Framework, a conceptual tool designed to help operationalise the approach. The framework can be used to deconstruct embedded ideologies and analyse the appropriateness of development goals, to map development as a systemic process, and to plan interventions which can result in increased freedom of choice for people. Three examples of the application of the Choice Framework in the field of information and communication for development (ICT4D) are given. The three technologies which are examined, telecentres (Infocentros), Chilecompra and Fair Tracing, can be placed at different places of a determinism continuum, some reducing the spectrum of choices a user has. The paper argues that while frameworks such as the Choice Framework can be developed further to increase the operationalisability of the capability approach, it is up to development funders to accept the fact that people’s choices are never fully predictable and thus Sen’s ‘development as freedom’ will inevitably be a dynamic and open-ended process.     

Karcı summarization: A simple and effective approach for automatic text summarization using Karcı entropy

Increases in the amount of text resources available via the Internet has amplified the need for automated document summarizing tools. However, further efforts are needed in order to improve the quality of the existing summarization tools currently available. The current study proposes Karcı Summarization, a novel methodology for extractive, generic summarization of text documents. Karcı Entropy was used for the first time in a document summarization method within a unique approach. An important feature of the proposed system is that it does not require any kind of information source or training data. At the stage of presenting the input text, a tool for text processing was introduced; known as KUSH (named after its authors; Karcı, Uçkan, Seyyarer, and Hark), and is used to protect semantic consistency between sentences. The Karcı Entropy-based solution chooses the most effective, generic and most informational sentences within a paragraph or unit of text. Experimentation with the Karcı Summarization approach was tested using open-access document text (Document Understanding Conference; DUC-2002, DUC-2004) datasets. Performance achievement of the Karcı Summarization approach was calculated using metrics known as Recall-Oriented Understudy for Gisting Evaluation (ROUGE). The experimental results showed that the proposed summarizer outperformed all current state-of-the-art methods in terms of 200-word summaries in the metrics of ROUGE-1, ROUGE-2, ROUGE-L, and ROUGE-W-1.2. In addition, the proposed summarizer outperformed the nearest competitive summarizers by a factor of 6.4% for ROUGE-1 Recall on the DUC-2002 dataset. These results demonstrate that Karcı Summarization is a promising technique and it is therefore expected to attract interest from researchers in the field. Our approach was shown to have a high potential for adoptability. Moreover, the method was assessed as quite insensitive to disorderly and missing texts due to its KUSH text processing module.     

A Review of: “Computer Mediated Communication: Social Interaction and the Internet”

The Internet has doubled in size every year in recent years and now spans the globe, facilitating the exchange of all matter of digital data. Recent development has been categorized by an explosion in new commercial activity. Despite overwhelming coverage in the popular press, relatively little is understood regarding the impact the Internet is having on firms that use this medium to facilitate commerce. Even less is understood about the impact on small enterprises-the largest segment of U.S., Japanese, and Western European businesses. This article reports the results of an exploratory study examining critical issues surrounding the use of the Internet in emerging enterprises. The survey (1) describes how small businesses develop and use their on-line sales presence, (2) explores factors that motivate firms to invest in electronic commerce, (3) assesses the importance of the expected benefits of an on-line sales presence on the decision to go on-line, and (4) examines some of the barriers that prevent small businesses from further developing their on-line presence.     

A confluence of new technology and the right to water: experience and potential from South Africa’s constitution and commons

South Africa’s groundbreaking constitution explicitly confers a right of access to sufficient water (section 27). But the country is officially ‘water-stressed’ and around 10 % of the population still has no access to on-site or off-site piped or tap water. It is evident that a disconnect exists between this right and the reality for many; however the reasons for the continuation of such discrepancies are not always clear. While barriers to sufficient water are myriad, one significant factor contributing to insufficient and unpredictable access to water is the high percentage of broken water pumps. Previous studies have reported that between 20 and 50 % of all hand operated water pumps installed on the African continent are broken, or out of use. Monitoring and maintenance of pumps, which in South Africa is the responsibility of local municipalities is often ineffective, in part due to the distances between municipal centres and rural communities and the consequent costs of site visits, as well as breakdowns within the local bureaucratic system. The emergence of new telemetry tools that can remotely monitor water applications constitutes a novel and cost-efficient alternative to undertaking regular sites visits. Sustainable, appropriate, low-cost telemetry systems are emerging that could be used to monitor the operational performance of water pumps, or a wide range of other field parameters, and to communicate this information swiftly and cheaply to water service providers, using SMS messages. Data on the performance of water pumps could also be made available to the public online. This is an example of how ICT can be used for water resources management and environmental regulation, as well as in the governance of socio-economic rights: helping to optimize water allocation by improving communication and strengthening accountability.     

How can tacit knowledge be shared more in organizations? A multidimensional approach to the role of social capital and locus of control

This multidimensional study looks at the influence of social capital and internal vs external locus of control on tacit knowledge-sharing intention and behaviour, and the relationship between the two. The relations studied within the framework of the proposed model are tested by regression analyses. The findings indicate that social capital and its basic structural, cognitive, and relational dimensions tend to increase tacit knowledge-sharing intention, which gradually turns into behaviour because, according to Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour, behavioural intention is the immediate antecedent to behaviour (or according to Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour, a person’s intention to perform a behaviour increases as subjective norms become more favourable). It is further concluded that having an internal locus of control increases both the intentions and behaviour, whereas external locus of control only increases the behaviour. The study also concludes that tacit knowledge-sharing intention gradually turns into sharing behaviour. The study is considered to contribute to the field of knowledge management in various ways. In this study a multidimensional survey of 42 questions was used to investigate the research topic and its sub-dimensions, and the data were collected via face-to-face interviews. The population of the study was 106 nursing students, and all components of the research universe were reached. It was found that social capital positively affects and increases tacit knowledge-sharing intentions and behaviour. A research model based on the conceptual framework was developed and research questions were addressed by means of this model and the findings.     

A Victorian hope for aerial navigation: Argyll as a theorist of flight and the first president of the Aëronautical Society of Great Britain

In 1866 the Aëronautical Society of Great Britain was founded with George Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll (1823–1900) as first president, and patron. The purpose of the society was to further the study of aerial navigation as well as to make aeronautics a respectable science, and today the society--now the Royal Aeronautical Society--serves as a professional body dedicated to aerospace research. There were two fundamental areas of scientific knowledge key to the society in its initial decades: 1) a detailed understanding of the principles of bird flight, and 2) the practical application of that knowledge in the construction of flying machines. Argyll firmly belonged to the former being a well-seasoned ornithologist and theorist of flight, and, with the publication of his best-selling book The Reign of Law (1867), was one of the first to popularise the theoretical principles of bird flight. In this paper, I examine the relationship between bird and mechanical flight through Argyll's ornithological studies, with a focus on the various factors early in Argyll's life that led to his eventual position as president of the Aëronautical Society. By analysing the influence of his family relations, home environment and religious convictions, I show how Argyll’s scientific undertakings existed as part of a wider network of theistic Victorian aristocrats who contributed to the creation and professionalization of scientific disciplines in a way that contrasted markedly with the methods of many of the scientific naturalists.     

Rethinking disability in Amartya Sen’s approach: ICT and equality of opportunity

This article presents an analysis of the concept of disability in Amartya Sen’s capabilities and functionings approach in the context of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Following a critical review of the concept of disability—from its traditional interpretation as an essentially medical concept to its later interpretation as a socially constructed category—we will introduce the concept of functional diversity. The importance of human diversity in the capabilities and functionings approach calls for incorporating this concept into the analysis of well-being and quality of life in persons with disability—aspects in which ICT currently plays a major role. When one contemplates these technologies, it becomes clear that factors such as accessibility, design for all, and user participation in development and implementation processes are key strategies in promoting equal rights and equal opportunity for persons with disability in the different environments of the information society.     

At the Intersection of the Digital Divide and the Knowledge Gap: Do Knowledge Domains and Measures Matter?

This study reports on knowledge gain, examined through three separate measures (free recall, comprehension and recognition) among high- and low-education groups who used two types of news media (newspaper vs. online) to consume two kinds of news (public affairs vs. entertainment). Results (n = 123) confirm the knowledge gap and validate concerns about the digital divide. Yet three different knowledge acquisition measures generated dissimilar findings: strong education effects for free recall, strong media format effects for recognition, and strong interaction effects between education and media format for comprehension. The implications of these inconsistencies are considered for measuring knowledge gaps in future research.     

State estimation of neutral Markovian jump systems: A relaxed L–K functional approach

This paper investigates the state estimation problem of uncertain neutral delay systems with Markovian jumping parameters. First, a novel Lyapunov–Krasovskii (L–K) functional containing the interconnected information between neutral and discrete delay is proposed. Then, based on Jensen’s integral and Wirtinger-based inequality, the obtained results are improved by relaxing the positive-definiteness restrictions on Lyapunov matrices. Third, the state estimators are designed to guarantee the asymptotic stability of the error state system. Finally, numerical examples are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed results.