The effects of knowledge management on innovative success – An empirical analysis of German firms

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effects of knowledge management on the innovation success of firms in Germany. We look at innovative firms in the period from 2000 to 2002 taken from the Mannheim Innovation Panel and estimate the effect of collaborative measures of knowledge management on the immediate economic success of different types of innovations. The results of our matching analysis reveal that firms which apply knowledge management perform better in terms of higher-than-average shares of turnover with innovative products compared to their twins. We do not find a significant effect of knowledge management on the share of cost reductions with process innovation.     

Ethanol-glycerin fixation with thymol conservation: a potential alternative to formaldehyde and phenol embalming

Anatomical fixation and conservation are required to prevent specimens from undergoing autolysis and decomposition. While fixation is the primary arrest of the structures responsible for autolysis and decomposition, conservation preserves the state of fixation. Although commonly used, formaldehyde has been classified as carcinogenic to humans. For this reason, an adequate substitute was developed. Ethanol-glycerin fixation and thymol conservation are described and compared with formaldehyde and phenol in this technical report. The setup, tissue qualities, financial aspects, and health concerns of this method are discussed. Ethanol-glycerin fixation and thymol conservation provide outstanding haptic and optic tissue qualities. Typical formaldehyde and phenol effects, such as skin, airway, and eye irritation, as well as carcinogenic effects, can be circumvented by using ethanol-glycerin and thymol instead. Ethanol-glycerin fixation is more expensive than formaldehyde and requires an explosion-proof facility. However, the absence of health effects and its convincing tissue qualities balance these higher costs. Therefore, ethanol-glycerin fixation and thymol conservation provide a potential alternative and complement established fixation techniques. The use of carcinogenic formaldehyde and toxic phenol can be effectively restricted through the use of the described method.     

Integration of programmable microfluidics and on-chip fluorescence detection for biosensing applications

We describe the integration of an actively controlled programmable microfluidic sample processor with on-chip optical fluorescence detection to create a single, hybrid sensor system. An array of lifting gate microvalves (automaton) is fabricated with soft lithography, which is reconfigurably joined to a liquid-core, anti-resonant reflecting optical waveguide (ARROW) silicon chip fabricated with conventional microfabrication. In the automaton, various sample handling steps such as mixing, transporting, splitting, isolating, and storing are achieved rapidly and precisely to detect viral nucleic acid targets, while the optofluidic chip provides single particle detection sensitivity using integrated optics. Specifically, an assay for detection of viral nucleic acid targets is implemented. Labeled target nucleic acids are first captured and isolated on magnetic microbeads in the automaton, followed by optical detection of single beads on the ARROW chip. The combination of automated microfluidic sample preparation and highly sensitive optical detection opens possibilities for portable instruments for point-of-use analysis of minute, low concentration biological samples.     

What students learn in problem-based learning: a process analysis

This study aimed to provide an account of how learning takes place in problem-based learning (PBL), and to identify the relationships between the learning-oriented activities of students with their learning outcomes. First, the verbal interactions and computer resources studied by nine students for an entire PBL cycle were recorded. The relevant concepts articulated and studied individually while working on the problem-at-hand were identified as units of analysis and counted to demonstrate the growth in concepts acquired over the PBL cycle. We identified two distinct phases in the process—an initial concept articulation, and a later concept repetition phase. To overcome the sample-size limitations of the first study, we analyzed the verbal interactions of, and resources studied, by another 35 students in an entire PBL cycle using structural equation modeling. Results show that students’ verbal contributions during the problem analysis phase strongly influenced their verbal contributions during self-directed learning and reporting phases. Verbal contributions and individual study influenced similarly the contributions during the reporting phase. Increased verbalizations of concepts during the reporting phase also led to higher achievement. We found that collaborative learning is significant in the PBL process, and may be more important than individual study in determining students’ achievement.     

The influence of knowledge-based resources and business scholars’ internationalization strategies on research performance

This study investigates how business research scholars’ internationalization strategies influence their research performance and how this relationship is moderated by the availability of different knowledge-based resources. The authors analyze citations to journal articles authored by business research scholars with German affiliations and examine how the number of citations is determined by international collaborations and a researcher's knowledge resources in terms of language skills, research experience, and foreign market knowledge. The results demonstrate that the augmentation of complementary knowledge resources (i.e., when researchers lack language skills and foreign market knowledge) positively influences the performance of a collaboration-based internationalization strategy (i.e., collaborations with international researchers). The collaboration-based strategy also improves performance for less experienced researchers, but this advantage diminishes with increasing research experience. The findings provide further insights into drivers of scholars’ research performance and have practical implications for science policy.     

What a difference mentoring makes: service learning and engagement for college students

Colleges are increasingly interested in ways to better engage students in their academic careers. This article reports 20 college students' experiences as mentors for at‐risk fourth‐graders through a mentoring program called The Learning Connection (TLC), run by the Community Services Office at Moravian College. The study describes students' voluntary participation in service learning activities as a source of student engagement, the characteristics of the TLC mentoring program, the process by which student mentors reported their experiences over the course of the academic year, and the benefits of the mentoring program through the eyes of the college student mentors. At the beginning of the mentoring experience, mentors reported that the primary reasons for mentoring were to make a difference in a child's life and supplement classroom learning. At the end of the academic year, mentors reported that mentoring taught them important lessons about children, themselves, community work and the value of mentoring. Mentor feedback supports mentoring, specifically, and service learning, generally, as a source of student engagement for college students.     

Planned Flexibility for Course Reserves

Decades-old innovation in course reserves supply has turned into cumbersome and duplicated processes. The need to improve services at the University of South Florida was augmented by changing platforms and systems university-wide. Service enhancements are often bombarded with unforeseen obstacles. By building in a little flexibility into course reserves service, one university was able to deal with year after year of system migrations.