Research Strategy in 4D Printing: Disruptive vs Incremental?

Author(s):  
Frédéric Demoly ◽  
Jean-Claude André

The paper aims at presenting 4D printing as a research-intensive technology from a critical external perspective. It provides a comprehensive discussion on the possible future of this emerging domain and also highlights weaknesses and strengths of applying a disruptive or incremental research strategy. Most scientific research efforts in 4D printing contribute to developing the spectrum of possible changes by investigating stimulus/smart materials combinations with additive manufacturing technologies. Although the current results are spectacular, the performances are still far from the basic requirements expected in the industry. The paper highlights the current limitations and trends towards incremental research strategies and argues in favor of risk-taking and the disruptive nature of research to make leaps that benefit society. Even if transgressive promises are associated with this technology with high growth potential in academic research, where creativity is involved and related invention derived, targeted applications are far from being achieved leading to a risk of the slow death of the field and unsatisfactory innovation. Based on this assessment, it appears that close fields in a situation of possible disciplinary porosity can – with a little openness and some creativity – move away from the current highly self-centered work to try to rekindle 4D printing, provided that risk-taking in interdisciplinary research is better supported. If creativity and interdisciplinary project management for innovation are to be promoted, the organizational context must be conducive to risk-taking for this redeployment.

2014 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eujin Pei

Purpose – This feature article aims to review state-of-the-art developments in additive manufacture, in particular, 4D printing. It discusses what it is, what research has been carried out and maps potential applications and its future impact. Design/methodology/approach – The article first defines additive manufacturing technologies and goes on to describe the state-of-the-art. Following which the paper examines several case studies and maps a trend that shows an emergence of 4D printing. Findings – The case studies highlight a particular specialization within additive manufacture where the use of adaptive, biomimetic composites can be programmed to reshape, or have embedded properties or functionality that transform themselves when subjected to external stimuli. Originality/value – This paper discusses the state-of-the-art of additive manufacture, discussing strategies that can be used to reduce the print process (such as through kinematics); and the use of smart materials where parts adapt themselves in response to the surrounding environment supporting the notion of self-assemblies.


2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 31-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrícia Becsky-Nagy

Venture backed spin-offs represent a low proportion of companies, even of innovative companies. The research question was, whether these companies have an important role in innovation and economic growth. I present the most important indicators of innovation in connection with entrepreneurship, the measures of start-ups, mainly the high-tech ones. I describe the position of venture capital industry nowadays, detailing the classical venture capital investments, targeting high-growth potential small firms, even university spin-offs. The study presents the results of a survey made as a counterpart of an academic research team, examining spin-offs, entrepreneurs and technology transfer in the most important Hungarian universities. I found that the most important obstacles of venture capital investments in high-tech spin-offs are the information gap between demand and supply side, the lack of entrepreneurs’ willingness to give up freedom in decision making, despite of low managerial skills. The low quality of financial environment is also an obstacle of the segment. JEL Codes: G24, M13


Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (21) ◽  
pp. 6442
Author(s):  
Kunal Mondal ◽  
Prabhat Kumar Tripathy

Over the last few decades, advanced manufacturing and additive printing technologies have made incredible inroads into the fields of engineering, transportation, and healthcare. Among additive manufacturing technologies, 3D printing is gradually emerging as a powerful technique owing to a combination of attractive features, such as fast prototyping, fabrication of complex designs/structures, minimization of waste generation, and easy mass customization. Of late, 4D printing has also been initiated, which is the sophisticated version of the 3D printing. It has an extra advantageous feature: retaining shape memory and being able to provide instructions to the printed parts on how to move or adapt under some environmental conditions, such as, water, wind, light, temperature, or other environmental stimuli. This advanced printing utilizes the response of smart manufactured materials, which offer the capability of changing shapes postproduction over application of any forms of energy. The potential application of 4D printing in the biomedical field is huge. Here, the technology could be applied to tissue engineering, medicine, and configuration of smart biomedical devices. Various characteristics of next generation additive printings, namely 3D and 4D printings, and their use in enhancing the manufacturing domain, their development, and some of the applications have been discussed. Special materials with piezoelectric properties and shape-changing characteristics have also been discussed in comparison with conventional material options for additive printing.


Author(s):  
Khodadad Mostakim ◽  
Nahid Imtiaz Masuk ◽  
Md. Rakib Hasan ◽  
Md. Shafikul Islam

The advancement in 3D printing has led to the rapid growth of 4D printing technology. Adding time, as the fourth dimension, this technology ushered the potential of a massive evolution in fields of biomedical technologies, space applications, deployable structures, manufacturing industries, and so forth. This technology performs ingenious design, using smart materials to create advanced forms of the 3-D printed specimen. Improvements in Computer-aided design, additive manufacturing process, and material science engineering have ultimately favored the growth of 4-D printing innovation and revealed an effective method to gather complex 3-D structures. Contrast to all these developments, novel material is still a challenging sector. However, this short review illustrates the basic of 4D printing, summarizes the stimuli responsive materials properties, which have prominent role in the field of 4D technology. In addition, the practical applications are depicted and the potential prospect of this technology is put forward.


2021 ◽  
pp. 227853372198952
Author(s):  
Mostafa Saidur Rahim Khan ◽  
Naheed Rabbani

This study examines the growth potential of the market leader and market challenger in Japan’s telecommunications services industry. We focus on Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) and KDDI, the market leader and challenger (respectively) in terms of sales revenue, total assets, and market share. Following finance literatures, we use higher values of price–earnings ratio (P/E) and market-to-book-value-of-equity ratio (MV/BV) as the indicators of growth potential. High growth firms have the potential to outperform the overall market over a significant period of time providing a good investment opportunity for retail and institutional investors. This study uses financial data of the NTT and KDDI from the period between 2001 and 2016 and applies several regression models to examine the growth potential of the market leader and market challenger in Japan’s telecommunications services industry. Using the P/E and MV/BV as indicators of growth potential, we show that the market challenger’s growth potential is significantly higher than that of the market leader, even after controlling for firm size, liquidity, profitability, leverage, cash flow, and age.


Author(s):  
Susanne Ravn

AbstractThis paper sets out from the hypothesis that the embodied competences and expertise which characterise dance and sports activities have the potential to constructively challenge and inform phenomenological thinking. While pathological cases present experiences connected to tangible bodily deviations, the specialised movement practices of dancers and athletes present experiences which put our everyday experiences of being a moving body into perspective in a slightly different sense. These specialised experiences present factual variations of how moving, sensing and interacting can be like for us as body-subjects. To use of these sources inevitably demands that qualitative research methodologies – especially short-term ethnographical fieldwork – form part of the research strategy and qualify the way the researcher involves a second-person perspective when interviewing dancers and athletes about their experiences. In the subsequent phases analysing the data generated, I argue that researchers first strive to achieve internal consistency of empirical themes identified in the case of movement practices in question thus keeping to a contextualised and lived perspective, also denoted as an emic perspective. In subsequent phases phenomenological insights are then actively engaged in the exploration and discussion of the possible transcendental structures making the described subjective experiences possible. The specialised and context-defined experiences of ‘what a moving body can be like’ are accordingly involved as factual variations to constructively add to and potentially challenge phenomenological descriptions. Lastly, I exemplify how actual research strategies have been enacted in a variety of projects involving professional dancers’, golfers’ and sports dancers’ practices and experiences, respectively.


Author(s):  
A. Nagimova

The article analyses cross-border mergers and acquisition deals (M&A-deals) between the CIS and Persian Gulf countries in the period from 1990 till the present day. The author defines distinctive features, number, value, status and transparency of such M&A-deals, estimates average deal value and volume of the largest M&A-deals. In addition, the author shows country, industry and type breakdown of M&A-deals. Then the author reviews the main cross-border M&A-deals by industries. In the financial sector the biggest M&A-deal is between the Ministry of finance of Abu-Dhabi and the Russian direct investment fund (RDIF), the two main players from the CIS side are RDIF and VTB. Then the author analyses M&A-deals in extractive sector, and defines the biggest project which is joint venture of LUKoil in Saudi Arabia. In the production sector Russian metallurgical companies are the main investors. In the transport and infrastructure sphere the biggest project is the building of international transit corridor between Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Oman. The main investor in port sector of CIS is DP World from UAE. The author defines the sectors with high growth potential of cross-border M&A-activity. These are energy, agriculture, construction and tourism. The most significant deals in these sectors are the acquisition of Russian Enel OGK-5 by Emirates investors, building of Abu Dhabi Plaza in Astana (Kazakhstan) with the highest tower in the whole Central Asia and Russian-Emirates partnership for the building of satellite city in Moscow region. As far as Persian Gulf countries are the largest foodstuff importers in the world the potential of M&A-deals in agriculture industry and prospects for CIS grain exporters are also high. In conclusion, the author resumes that the trend in the number of cross-border M&A-deals is positive and that a good potential for development of investment cooperation between countries exists.


2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Rivadávia Correa Drummond de Alvarenga

Investigates the theme known as “Knowledge Management” (KM) in three large Brazilian organizations trying to discuss its concepts, constituent elements, managerial approaches and tools, while aiming at leaving behind the purely terminological discussion, which is innocuous and naive. The basic presuppositions were two: (i) most of what it´s referred to or named KM is actually “Information Management” (IM) and IM is just one of the components of KM. KM is more than simply IM due to the fact that it includes and incorporates other concerns, such as the creation, use and sharing of information and knowledge in the organizational context; (ii) a conceptual model or map can be formulated based on three basic conceptions: (a) a strategic conception of information and knowledge, (b) the introduction of such strategy in the tactical and operational levels through the several managerial approaches and informaion technology tools and (c) the creation of an organizational space for knowledge. The main objective is to investigate and analyze the conceptions, motivations, practices and results of KM effectively implemented in three large Brazilian organizations. The qualitative research strategy used was the study of multiple cases with incorporated units of analysis and three criteria ere observed for the judgment of the quality of the research project: validity of the construct, external validity and reliability. Multiple sources of evidence were used and data analysis consisted of three flows of activities: data reduction, data displays and conclusion drawing/verification. The results confirmed the presuppositions and the fact that KM means a rethinking of management practices in the information ea. It was also identified that the main challenges facing organizations committed to KM have its focus on change management, cultural and behavioral issues and the creation of an enabling context that favors the creation, use and sharing of information and knowledge.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-98
Author(s):  
T. Yu. Cherkashina ◽  
E. A. Chernyshova ◽  
S. N. Lyutov

The goal of the study was to reveal distinction between the reading practices at different educational levels and to specify the libraries’ place in these practices. The reading practices are determined not only by the new technological (digital) environment but also by the institutional and organizational context and social relationship within the educational environment. The case study of educa-tional institutions of Novosibirsk Academic Center (namely Novosibirsk State Uni-versity and the University’s specialized Academic Research Center) was accom-plished. The data was acquired through structured interviews, questionnaire-based survey supplemented with the statistical data of RAS SB State Public Scien-tific and Technological Library. The majority of high-graders use the library for textbooks and/or if recommended by the teacher. The university library is less involved in the educational process; the students visit the library occasionally (e.g. searching for rare publications or lacking alternatives). The university is not their source of digital documents or full texts either; the students prefer not to scruti-nize the specificity of every database and access procedure and turn to searchable Internet-resources. The library, in student’s opinion, needs modernization for less formal and disciplinary regulations, for more comfort, and polyfunctional envi-ronment of reading rooms.


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