For their technological sustainability innovations to become successful, entrepreneurs can strategically shape the technological field in which they are involved. The technological innovation systems (TISs) literature has generated valuable insights into the processes which need to be stimulated for the successful development and implementation of innovative sustainability technologies. To explore the applicability of the TIS framework from the perspective of entrepreneurs, we conducted a case study in the Dutch smart grids sector. We found that the TIS framework generally matches the perspectives of entrepreneurs. For its use by entrepreneurs, we suggest a slight adaptation of this framework. The process ‘Market formation’ needs to be divided into processes that are driven by the government and processes that are driven by entrepreneurs. There should be a greater emphasis on collaborative marketing, on changing user behaviour and preferences and on the development of fair and feasible business models.
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Innovations are required in urban infrastructures due to the pressing needs for mitigating climate change and prevent resource depletion. In order to address the slow pace of innovation in urban systems, this paper analyses factors involved in attempts to introduce novel sanitary systems. Today new requirements are important: sanitary systems should have an optimal energy/climate performance, with recovery of resources, and with fewer emissions. Anaerobic digestion has been suggested as an alternative to current aerobic waste water treatment processes. This paper presents an overview of attempts to introduce novel anaerobic sanitation systems for domestic sanitation. The paper identifies main factors that contributed to a premature termination of such attempts. Especially smaller scale anaerobic sanitation systems will probably not be able to compete economically with traditional sewage treatment. However, anaerobic treatment has various advantages for mitigating climate change, removing persistent chemicals, and for the transition to a circular economy. The paper concludes that loss avoidance, both in the sewage system and in the waste water treatment plants, should play a key role in determining experiments that could lead to a transition in sanitation. http://dx.doi.org/10.13044/j.sdewes.d6.0214 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karel-mulder-163aa96/
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Digital innovation in education – as in any other sector – is not only about developing and implementing novel ideas, but also about having these ideas effectively used as well as widely accepted and adopted, so that many students can benefit from innovations improving education. Effectiveness, transferability and scalability cannot be added afterwards; it must be integrated from the start in the design, development and implementation processes, as is proposed in the movement towards evidence-informed practice (EIP). The impact an educational innovation has on the values of various stakeholders is often overlooked. Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is an approach to integrate values in technological design. In this paper we discuss how EIP and VSD may be combined into an integrated approach to digital innovation in education, which we call value-informed innovation. This approach not only considers educational effectiveness, but also incorporates the innovation’s impact on human values, its scalability and transferability to other contexts. We illustrate the integrated approach with an example case of an educational innovation involving digital peer feedback.
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Business innovation is a multidisciplinary area of expertise that bridges the gap between traditional areas of study such as business administration, organizational studies, marketing, design, engineering and entrepreneurship. Business innovation focuses on creating, accelerating and managing new and sustainable business models through innovation (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010; Keeley, Walters, Pikkel, and Quinn, 2013).
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Global society is confronted with various challenges: climate change should be mitigated, and society should adapt to the impacts of climate change, resources will become scarcer and hence resources should be used more efficiently and recovered after use, the growing world population and its growing wealth create unprecedented emissions of pollutants, threatening public health, wildlife and biodiversity. This paper provides an overview of the challenges and risks for sewage systems, next to some opportunities and chances that these developments pose. Some of the challenges are emerging from climate change and resource scarcity, others come from the challenges emerging from stricter regulation of emissions. It also presents risks and threats from within the system, next to external influences which may affect the surroundings of the sewage systems. It finally reflects on barriers to respond to these challenges. http://dx.doi.org/10.13044/j.sdewes.d6.0231 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabineeijlander/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/karel-mulder-163aa96/
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In December of 2004 the Directorate General for Research and Technological Development (DG RTD) of the European Commission (EC) set up a High-Level Expert Group to propose a series of measures to stimulate the reporting of Intellectual Capital in research intensive Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs). The Expert Group has focused on enterprises that either perform Research and Development (R&D), or use the results of R&D to innovate and has also considered the implications for the specialist R&D units of larger enterprises, dedicated Research & Technology Organizations and Universities. In this report the Expert Group presents its findings, leading to six recommendations to stimulate the reporting of Intellectual Capital in SMEs by raising awareness, improving reporting competencies, promoting the use of IC Reporting and facilitating standardization.
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The promotor was Prof. Erik Jan Hultink and copromotors Dr Ellis van den Hende en Dr R. van der Lugt. The title of this dissertation is Armchair travelling the innovation journey. ‘Armchair travelling’ is an expression for travelling to another place, in the comfort of one’s own place. ‘The innovation journey’ is the metaphor Van de Ven and colleagues (1999) have used for travelling the uncharted river of innovation, the highly unpredictable and uncontrollable process of innovation. This research study began with a brief remark from an innovation project leader who sighed after a long and rough journey: ‘had I known this ahead of time…’. From wondering ‘what could he have known ahead of time?’ the immediate question arose: how do such innovation journeys develop? How do other innovation project leaders lead the innovation journey? And could I find examples of studies about these experiences from an innovation project leader’s perspective that could have helped the sighing innovation project leader to have known at least some of the challenges ahead of time? This dissertation is the result of that quest, as we do know relatively little how this process of the innovation project leader unfolds over time. The aim of this study is to increase our understanding of how innovation project leaders lead their innovation journeys over time, and to capture those experiences that could be a source for others to learn from and to be better prepared. This research project takes a process approach. Such an approach is different from a variance study. Process thinking takes into account how and why things – people, organizations, strategies, environments – change, act and evolve over time, expressed by Andrew Pettigrew (1992, p.10) as catching “reality in flight”.
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This is the introduction to the special issue of World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development (WREMSD) dedicated to workplace innovation and social innovation related to work and organisation. As technological and business model innovations alone are not sufficient to enhance opportunities for businesses and employment, awareness is rising that better use should be made of human talents and new ways of organising and managing. In order to make working environments more receptive for innovation, and to enable people in organisations to take up an entrepreneurial role as intrapreneurs, a shift towards workplace innovation can be observed. Workplace innovation is complementary to technological and business model innovation, and a necessary ingredient for successful renewal, in that it addresses a type of management that seeks collaboration with employees through dialogue and employee engagement.
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The world is rapidly transforming. Economic, ecological and technological developments transcend existing boundaries and challenge the way we innovate. The challenge we face is to reinvent innovation as well, changing the way organisations and industries innovate and cooperate. Only with a new approach we can design a better future: an approach where stakeholders from government, organisations, companies and users participate in new ways of collaboration; an approach where solutions are realised that makes our society future-proof. Participatory innovation means that the innovation team changes: expanding beyond the boundaries of the own organisation. For organisations and companies, this is a huge step. Every partner must be willing to think and act beyond their own borders and participate in a joint effort. Participative innovation is a new way of working, where new challenges are encountered. In the field of urban lighting, this transformation is strongly felt. This paper will further explore the challenge and describe a rich case study where participative innovation is used to rethink, redesign and realise the solutions to transform urban lighting from functional lighting to improving social quality.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the importance for university teachers to have adequate pedagogical and technological competences to cope with the various possible educational scenarios (face-to-face, online, hybrid, etc.), making use of appropriate active learning methodologies and supporting technologies to foster a more effective learning environment. In this context, the InnovaT project has been an important initiative to support the development of pedagogical and technological competences of university teachers in Latin America through several trainings aiming to promote teacher innovation. These trainings combined synchronous online training through webinars and workshops with asynchronous online training through the MOOC “Innovative Teaching in Higher Education.” This MOOC was released twice. The first run took place right during the lockdown of 2020, when Latin American teachers needed urgent training to move to emergency remote teaching overnight. The second run took place in 2022 with the return to face-to-face teaching and the implementation of hybrid educational models. This article shares the results of the design of the MOOC considering the constraints derived from the lockdowns applied in each country, the lessons learned from the delivery of such a MOOC to Latin American university teachers, and the results of the two runs of the MOOC.
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