scholarly journals Spontane strategier i innovationsnetværk: materialitetens betydning for stabiliseringen af virtuelle verdner som professionelt kommunikationsmedie [Spontaneous strategies in innovation networks: The importance of materiality in stabilising virtual worlds]

Author(s):  
Emil Husted ◽  
Ursula Plesner

Much research has dealt with how social and organisational processes change when they take place in virtual spaces. This article considers innovation processes in which actors try to establish virtual worlds as platforms for professional communication. However, instead of focusing on internal communication processes in virtual worlds, the article seeks to question the dichotomy between physical and virtual worlds and to explore the importance of materiality in organising the virtual. Adopting a perspective inspired by actor-network theory, the article argues that physical places and objects do not only serve as context for innovation processes, but on the contrary are incorporated as strategic resources that actively help create the virtual worlds. The article is based on an empirical analysis of five Danish companies, and shows how companies make use of physical places and objects as strategic resources in the innovation process. Thus the article contributes to the literature on innovation in new media such as virtual worlds.

Author(s):  
Ursula Plesner ◽  
Maja Horst

This article explores how virtual worlds are rhetorically constructed as obvious, innovative spaces for communication about architecture. It is argued that the marketization of an innovative use of new media platforms happens in early phases of the innovation processes, and the success of new media technologies such as virtual worlds hinges on the creation of expectations, which are intertwined with the discursive construction of future users. Drawing on the sociology of expectations and the sociology of technology, the article argues that the configuration of expected users is a central part of the communication about the innovation. It is demonstrated that the creation of markets does not begin when innovations such as Virtual Worlds Architecture are settled, but is intertwined with early expectations about their promises and limitations. Rather than seeing virtual worlds as settled and secluded sites for social and cultural innovation in themselves, we have examined how actors involved with them try to sell them as such. A crucial challenge for these actors turns out to be the interpretative flexibility of the innovation, since arguments designed to attract one kind of expected user might problematize the configuration of other types of users.


2011 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 997-1007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilana Gershon

Ethnographers of new media face a challenge nowadays because they write about technologies people love to discuss and about which journalists love to write. They often find themselves writing against myths about digital media users that other digital media scholars, journalists, and even people interviewed hold in common. In the first decade of Internet research, skeptical scholars often wrote against assumptions about how social practices in virtual spaces differed from offline practices (see Dibbell 1998; Turkle 1995; Stone 1996). They were critiquing many of the premises that accompany an understanding of the virtual as “spaces or placesapart fromthe rest of social life” (Miller, Slater, and Suchman 2004: 77) in which people were supposedly experimenting with new forms of sociality and identity. While these debates continue to haunt more recent ethnographies of virtual worlds (see Boellstorff 2008; Nardi 2010; Taylor 2006), critical scholars of new media are now also addressing commonly held assumptions about the Internet when its use is explicitly understoodnotto be part of a sociality distinct from offline life. Indeed, the Internet now is taken to be a collection of interfaces for gathering information and conversing with other people—web-based communication can be as integrated into daily life as a phone call or reading a book (for an ethnographic study, see Gershon 2010). This transition from taking the Internet to be virtual to seeing the Internet as a collection of channels of communication has brought with it a new set of widespread presuppositions that ethnography is particularly adept at critiquing.


2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Gamboa González

The use of online virtual communities to deliver health information has grown with the creation of 3D online virtual worlds such as Second Life. The existence of virtual spaces offers the opportunity to use new media and spaces of social interaction, participation and collaboration to deliver realistic and vivid health experiences. While the potential seems great, in practice, there are significant limitations in using virtual online communities to deliver health information. First, these virtual worlds are fantasy spaces where people escape the limitations of their bodies to engage in social interactions. Second, virtual worlds lack the cues that usually signal medical authority, making virtual residents skeptical about health information and advice obtained in Second Life.


2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (03) ◽  
pp. 189-193
Author(s):  
M. Röhm ◽  
T. Prof. Bauernhansl ◽  
T. Schrodi

Für eine marktgerechte Produktentwicklung gibt es in Anlehnung an das Technologie-Reifegradmodell eine Vielzahl von Ansätzen, die den Entwicklungsstand von Technologie und Markt bewerten. Um im Innovationsprozess produktionsstrategische Lücken rechtzeitig aufzuzeigen, müssen Entwicklungsprozesse von Technologie, Markt und Produktion jedoch ganzheitlich betrachtet werden. Hierfür werden unterschiedliche Reifegradmodelle gegenübergestellt, Korrelationen aufgezeigt und erfolgsentscheidende Entwicklungsstufen abgeleitet.   Based on the technology maturity model, there is a variety of approaches describing the maturity of market demand and technology in order to combine technology push and market pull perspectives. However, to be able to show strategic gaps during the innovation process, development processes of technology, market and manufacturing skills have to be viewed holistically. For this purpose, the authors present different degrees of maturity models, show correlations and derive critical fields of action.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela K. Hollman ◽  
Sonja H. Bickford ◽  
Janet L. Lear

This article seeks to explain the key variables of internal communication processes of information technology executives, specifically chief information officers (CIOs), at higher education institutions. By understanding the key variables that influence the IT communication process, leaders and administrators, such as the CIO, can better communicate with their stakeholders leading to a successful, technology-integrated organization. While others have sought to model this business-IT relationship using communication as one part of a model, this study focuses upon only the CIO communication process adding value to current information technology management literature. This exploratory pilot article offers empirical insights about how CIOs communicate within their own team and up through the executive ranks of an organization. It suggests that CIOs can be divided into two categories; these two categories, keying off of communication variables, appear to directly affect the ultimate success or failure regarding the integration of technology into the mission and vision of the organization.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (06) ◽  
pp. 1340016 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUSTYNA DĄBROWSKA ◽  
IRINA FIEGENBAUM ◽  
ANTERO KUTVONEN

Open innovation holds great potential for improving the efficiency of companies' innovation processes, but also presents substantial risks. A key issue in innovation management is finding the right balance of openness, i.e., determining how open companies should be in their innovation activities. However, academics and business practitioners hold conflicting notions of what constitutes open innovation practice and of how "open innovation companies" are defined. In this paper, we present three in-depth case studies of global R&D-intensive companies, where we find that the firms' perception of their openness differs from their actual situation (as determined by the innovation practices that they apply), and that each company has a different view as to what constitutes open innovation. We claim that resolving conceptual ambiguity and differentiating between openness (as a philosophical aspect) and open innovation (as a way of structuring the innovation process) in research is critical in order to clarify the current state of open innovation research and enable the communication of results to practitioners.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 12469
Author(s):  
Beata Poteralska

Effective development of technological innovations requires efficient management at the stages of their generation, realisation, and their implementation. For this aim, concepts such as foresight, technology assessment, and organisational capabilities assessment can be applied; however, so far they have been used mainly individually or sometimes combined but to a very limited extent. Moreover, they are not used comprehensively, but only selectively, e.g., at some stages of the innovation processes. The research problem undertaken in the paper concerns the effectiveness of the integration of these concepts: future research (mainly foresight), technology assessment, and organisational capabilities assessment for the needs of supporting innovation processes. The paper is aimed at presenting an original approach assuming the integration of the aforementioned triad. The proposed approach has been developed individually by the paper’s author on the basis of (1) state of the art analysis comprising both theoretical approaches and practical examples of individual and combined application of the concepts analysed, and (2) the author’s practical experience resulting from research projects conducted collectively. The research result comprises an original matrix approach where the individual concepts of the triad are applied in a way enabling their mutual complementation at all successive stages of the innovation process. The approach proposed comprises modules referring to the succeeding stages of the innovation process, namely generation, realisation and application of technological innovations. The areas of the approach application and possible directions of its further development are presented.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-79
Author(s):  
Sabrina Luthfa

This paper aims to understand about how uncertainty emerges in the innovation process. Since uncertainty is embedded in the innovation process, to understand how uncertainty emerges in the process one needs to understand how innovation process unfolds over time. Since an innovation process involves various resource recombination activities occurring in several phases, to understand how innovation process unfolds one needs understand “how do various resource recombination activities occur over time for the creation of novelty?” This knowledge would enable us to understand the conditions under which vital activities of resource recombination can/cannot be undertaken and coordinated as well as would allow us to understand the underlying decisions made by the innovators for their efficient undertaking and coordination. This paper investigates the innovation process in two companies through performing qualitative study. The innovation processes are analysed in the light of a conceptual model developed based on the Dubois’ (1994) End-product related activity structure model, Håkansson’s (1987) “ARA model” and Goldratt’s (1997) “Critical chain concept”. The findings suggest that uncertainty emerges in the innovation process in a cycle of interaction with resource void, activity void and actors’ limited cognition due to lack of knowledge, undue optimism, and rationally justified reason for disregarding information. Accordingly, a great deal of compromises is made while undertaking the activities.


2019 ◽  
pp. 374-385
Author(s):  
Marina Myasnikova

The paper focuses on the problem of new digital generation’s participation in the media consumption process and first of all in television watching under conditions when the contemporary television audience transforms due to the emergence of mobile digital technologies. The digital generation is the most vivid segment of the society in terms of diverse interests and active media consumption; it possesses new selection opportunities and influences the elder generation. This article aims to define the digital generation’s role in contemporary media processes; identify its current functions and current attitude to traditional media, particularly television, as well as Russian telecontent. Methods of researching the media audience also change. The main object of mediametry measurements is now the process, not the result of media consumption. In practice, however, the audience is still viewed as a homogenous mass, not a dynamic system. That is why “mass” calculations cannot be used to judge specific audience needs. It is important not simply to measure views but also to study the audience, taking into account the content and formats of media texts consumed by it within the telecommunication process. The research applies the expert survey method within homogenous groups of young people and focuses on qualitative properties of media consumption, specifically its motivation structure and audience needs. Results of three expert surveys conducted among 17–27 years old journalism students of the Ural Federal University at various times are presented. The motives of telecontent consumption are defined. The paper reveals that the new digital generation relies on the telecontent posted on various online platforms. The youth have a critical attitude towards broadcast television not only because of competition from the new media but also due to low quality of professional media products. Additionally, representatives of the young media audience participate in mass communication processes not only as consumers but also as creators of their own video content.


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