Posts filed under 'Method'
… while looking up sites on innovation, I started with “the source”. And came across some Wikipedia entries.
What I think is important is the distinction between invention und innovation. Invention is concerned with coming up with ideas, building prototypes, etc. Innovation is about implementation and realisation.
As researchers we are mainly concerned with invention, i.e., coming up with ideas and building prototypes.
November 1st, 2006
Salzburg Research organised a workshop on e-business and SMEs. Mag. Peter Harlander representated the group “Consultants and IT” of Salzburg’s chamber of commerce.
The keynote was given by Hannes Selhofer, senior consultant from Empirica in Bonn. He presented the European e-business W@atch study and finally, showed three hypothesis
- The scepticism towards e-business is gone. There is a renaissance of the term “e-business”
- e-business is not a key- but a base-technology
- there has been a paradigm shift: in earlier days cost-cutting has been dominant, nowadays it is more issues of customer-relationship management that are addressed.
Veronika Hornung-Prähauser talked about e-business and change management; Thomas Peruzzi talked about open source and SMEs.
Further information can be obtained from http://info.ebusiness-impulswerkstatt.at/.
October 4th, 2006
Since a while, I am listening to weekly science podcasts, for instance by Deutschland Radio, www.dradio.de. The one of September 10, 2006, deals with the implications of September 11 (2001) on science and research in the US and more specifically, with the relationship of scientists and the Bush administration.
The arguments are as follows:
- there have been changes in research themes, for instance towards terror-attach prevention technologies, etc.
- along with the change in themes went a change in budget allocation. The NSF recently got less money for basic research (apparently the first time in history).
- it is much more difficult for foreign scientists to get to the US
- more and more, the Bush administration tries to influence the presentation of research results, most specifically with respect to results of climate research.
Dr. Alan Leshner (chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS is cited). There is a (German) written report available at http://www.dradio.de/dlf/sendungen/wib/541287/.
September 14th, 2006
Salzburg Research has just published its annual report. As for all non-commercial organisations, the real asset of institutions such as Salzburg Research lies in its Intellectual Capital; therefore, we publish an intellectual capital report (“Wissensbilanz”) as part of our annual report (since 2002, btw).
Originally, in 1994 Skandia AFS published a supplement to its annual report about talking about “hidden values in Skandia” (see the document Visualizing Intellectual Capital in Skandia).
ARC Seibersdorf and its former head of research, Günther Koch, have definitely promoted ICRs in Austria, see for instance a presentation to the World Bank entitled “IntellectualCapital Reporting (ICR) (“Wissensbilanz”) – Made in Austria”.
Stefan Weiß, Futurelab, discusses the (German) term “Wissensbilanz” and argues that it is misleading, as it does not distinguish between assets and liabilities (like a typical balance sheet does, see a blog entry on ICR vs. Wissensbilanz).
From our experience, I would argue that the core issues of ICRs include
- the definition of terms
- the methodology and process of generating the ICR, and
- the way to influence the indicators (because almost all indicators can only be influenced with indirect means)
A general terminology would be useful for monitoring and moreover benchmarking between organisations – Koch discusses some of the differences concerning the structuring of categories of intangible capital in major models in the presentation mentioned above.
The Fraunhofer-Institut für Produktionsanlagen und Konstruktionstechnik (IPK)has established a working group on promoting ICRs.
Daniela Gröbel/ Klaus North/ Günther Szogs provide a comparison of four different approaches.
May 18th, 2006
There has been an article in last week’s “Die Zeit” on the social web application “open_BC”: Das Vitamin-B-Netz, by Dirk Engelhardt, Die Zeit, 27.4.2006 (No. 18).
I would like to take this opportunity to discuss this type of applications as it is of particular interest: not too many years ago people argued about the Web being a medium where one would be exclusively anonymous (and that this feature was part of what makes the Web special). There is, for instance, Negroponte’s saying that “on the Internet nobody knows you are a dog”. Then, Rana Foroohar argues in a Newsweek special edition article on “Learning to Share” that the Internet was envisaged by the mother of all closed systems, the US Dept. of Defence and that the new type of openness could have hardly been imagined at that time (In: Newsweek, Special Edition “The Knowledge Revolution”, pp. 41, December 2005 – February 2006). Foroohar further argues that the image of the worker as a self-interested-only individual – as propagated by Adam Smith – is not correct any more.
One could add to that that applications such as Wikipedia are a good example of commonly creating and sharing knowledge, of not too bad quality as a recent article in Nature by J. Giles (“Internet encyclopaedias go head to head”) argues. BTW: a good definition of “Social Web” can be found on Wikipedia.
I personally believe it needs both: the opportunity for (almost) everyone (well: a high percentage of the population in Western society, anyway) to create and share; but in many situations we also need content that has been officially assured, has gone through several revision cycles, etc.
BTW: Salzburg Research organises a Symposium called “Social skills through social software”, May 23-24 2006 in Salzburg, St. Virgil.
May 5th, 2006
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