Digitalization to Achieve Technology Innovation in Climate Technology Transfer

Technology Innovation has the potential to play a strategic role in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of national efforts to address climate change. The United Nations (UN) Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN) is mandated to support developing countries’ climate change responses through innovative technologies to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. In order to enhance the role of the CTCN as an innovation matchmaker, it is important to explore and leverage the implementation potential of new digital technologies and their transformational impact. Thus, in this research, to engage digitalization as an innovative tool with the environment, we first explored digitalization during the climate technology transfer processes by comprehensively reviewing CTCN Technical Assistance (Digitalization Technical Assistance, D-TA) activities in three climate sectors of risk prediction, policy decision making, and resource optimization. Then, by applying analytical methodologies of in-depth interviews with major digital-climate stakeholders and a staged model for technology innovation, we propose future strategies for enhancing the role of CTCN as an innovation matchmaker in the three digitalization cases of digital collection, digital analysis, and digital diffusion.

The influence of cronyism on entrepreneurial resource acquisition

This research focuses on how entrepreneurs utilize cronyism to acquire resources. A case study method allowed us to explore three firms in the private property development industry in China. These firms uniquely cultivated cronyism and achieved distinctly different outcomes. Our findings highlight Chinese entrepreneurs in start-up ventures and later-stage enterprises employ cronyism. The underlying rationale for using cronyism have common and heterogeneous motivations. The similarity and distinguishing rationale also apply to the impact of cronyism. We also find two contingency working mechanisms for cronyism: entrepreneurial characteristics and a staged model for cronyism. With the firm’s growth, cronyism remains important, but firms with more community involvement outperform others. This research contributes to the theory on strategic network utilization for resource acquisition during entrepreneurial development stages. We investigate how entrepreneurial strategies can assist in adapting to the “rules of the game” while utilizing resources within the set contextual constraints.

MODELS OF THE LESSONS ON CRITICAL THINKING DEVELOPMENT: ANANLYSIS AND PECULIARITIES OF DESIGN

The article deals with the models of the lessons of critical thinking and the peculiarities of their design. The attention is drawn to the fact that critical thinking is an important element of the numerous processes necessary for effective learning, which are formed and developed through a complex, systematic and system-defined application of certain strategies, models, methods and techniques. There is given a detailed description of the basic model of the lesson on critical thinking development, which consists of three stages (the introduction, the main part and the summary), has a certain logic of application and provides ways for combining certain methods / techniques. The attention is focused on the correct and full application of the cyclic model of training by D. Kolb while designing the lessons on critical thinking. It is suggested that a five-staged model of the training by R. Duron, B. Limbach and W. Waugh, which is based on the existing theory and advanced methods of cognitive development of children, should be used to apply as the basis for the lessons on critical thinking development. The application of various models of the lessons on critical thinking development makes it possible to make an educational process more diverse and interesting for students, and for teachers. After all, the critical thinking is formed gradually, it is the result of the daily hard work of the teacher and a student, from lesson to lesson, from year to year, which, in a public prospect, prepares children to conscious and responsible participation in social processes, teaches them to make reasonable decisions, effectively solve problem situations.

A distress-continuum, disorder-threshold model of depression: a mixed-methods, latent class analysis study of slum-dwelling young men in Bangladesh

Background Binary categorical approaches to diagnosing depression have been widely criticized due to clinical limitations and potential negative consequences. In place of such categorical models of depression, a ‘staged model’ has recently been proposed to classify populations into four tiers according to severity of symptoms: ‘Wellness;’ ‘Distress;’ ‘Disorder;’ and ‘Refractory.’ However, empirical approaches to deriving this model are limited, especially with populations in low- and middle-income countries. Methods A mixed-methods study using latent class analysis (LCA) was conducted to empirically test non-binary models to determine the application of LCA to derive the ‘staged model’ of depression. The study population was 18 to 29-year-old men (n = 824) from an urban slum of Bangladesh, a low resource country in South Asia. Subsequently, qualitative interviews (n = 60) were conducted with members of each latent class to understand experiential differences among class members. Results The LCA derived 3 latent classes: (1) Severely distressed (n = 211), (2) Distressed (n = 329), and (3) Wellness (n = 284). Across the classes, some symptoms followed a continuum of severity: ‘levels of strain’, ‘difficulty making decisions’, and ‘inability to overcome difficulties.’ However, more severe symptoms such as ‘anhedonia’, ‘concentration issues’, and ‘inability to face problems’ only emerged in the severely distressed class. Qualitatively, groups were distinguished by severity of tension, a local idiom of distress. Conclusions The results indicate that LCA can be a useful empirical tool to inform the ‘staged model’ of depression. In the findings, a subset of distress symptoms was continuously distributed, but other acute symptoms were only present in the class with the highest distress severity. This suggests a distress-continuum, disorder-threshold model of depression, wherein a constellation of impairing symptoms emerge together after exceeding a high level of distress, i.e., a tipping point of tension heralds a host of depression symptoms.

Diffusion of innovations: a guiding framework for public health

Exploring the behavior change process has been of interest and importance to public health professionals, to translate research into practice. Diffusion of innovations (DOI) model has been extensively applied in public health to examine the process by which innovation is passively communicated to individuals and groups. It builds on a staged model of awareness, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation; and categorizes communities into innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%). It reflects on the diversity of strategies to be applied for different cadres of the society to bring about a wholistic change. Nonetheless, DOI suffers from ‘pro-innovation’ and ‘individual blame’ bias, as it fails to account for the influence of societal, cultural, and extraneous factors affecting individual behavior change. The social networks theory (SNT) in contrast, explains behavior change based on social networks and their influences. It builds on the constructs of homophily, centralization, reciprocity, transitivity, and density; and fills the void in the DOI model. We suggest public health professionals to combine the constructs of DOI and SNT in rolling out behavior change interventions, to yield a comprehensive approach.

The role of foreign technologies and R&D in innovation processes within catching-up CEE countries

Prior research showed that there is a growing consensus among researchers, which point out a key role of external knowledge sources such as external R&D and technologies in enhancing firms´ innovation. However, firms´ from catching-up Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries have already shown in the past that their innovation models differ from those applied, for example, in Western Europe. This study therefore introduces a novel two-staged model combining artificial neural networks and random forests to reveal the importance of internal and external factors influencing firms´ innovation performance in the case of 3,361 firms from six catching-up CEE countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), by using the World Banks´ Enterprise Survey data from 2019. We confirm the hypothesis that innovators in the catching-up CEE countries depend more on internal knowledge sources and, moreover, that participation in the firms groups represents an important factor of firms´ innovation. Surprisingly, we reject the hypothesis that foreign technologies are a crucial source of external knowledge. This study contributes to the theories of open innovation and absorptive capacity in the context of selected CEE countries and provides several practical implications for firms.

An Advanced Image Captioning using combination of CNN and LSTM

The Captioning of Image now a days is gaining a lot of interest which generates an automated simple and short sentence describing the image content. Machines indeed are trained in a way that they can understand the Image content and generate captions which are almost accurate at a human level of knowledge is a very tedious and interesting task. There are various solutions used to solve this tedious task and generate simple sentences known as captions using neural network which still comes with problems such as inaccurate captions, generating captions only for the seen images, etc. In this paper, the proposed system model was able to generate more precise captions using a two staged model which consists of a combination of Deep Neural Network algorithms (Convolutional and Long Short-Term Memory). The proposed model was able to overcome the problems arise using Traditional CNN and RNN algorithms. The model is trained and tested using the Flicker8k Data set.

The role of the translator/interpreter in knowledge transfer environments

This paper reports on the results of a larger research project that investigated the factors impacting on inter-organisational transfer in the New Zealand State Sector. Seven gatekeepers (boundary-spanning individuals) from different organisations were interviewed about their experiences in facilitating knowledge transfer between a cross-sector working group and their organisation. The context for the research was the Pathfinder Project, a project based around the development and transfer of an emergent knowledge model for strategic management, Managing for Outcomes (MfO). A range of factors that facilitated knowledge transfer were identified. Among these, translation and interpretation activities were found to be critical to successful knowledge transfer. Gatekeepers reported acting as translator/interpreter, an essential role which demanded specialised skills. The nature of this role is outlined, with reference to a staged model for knowledge transfer that emerged from the research project. The translator/interpreter role required gatekeepers to engage in active and continuous conversion of knowledge to meet the differing needs of a range of recipients. This helped to increase the overall absorptive capacity of participating organisations. Implications of these findings for research and practice are outlined. © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The role of the translator/interpreter in knowledge transfer environments

This paper reports on the results of a larger research project that investigated the factors impacting on inter-organisational transfer in the New Zealand State Sector. Seven gatekeepers (boundary-spanning individuals) from different organisations were interviewed about their experiences in facilitating knowledge transfer between a cross-sector working group and their organisation. The context for the research was the Pathfinder Project, a project based around the development and transfer of an emergent knowledge model for strategic management, Managing for Outcomes (MfO). A range of factors that facilitated knowledge transfer were identified. Among these, translation and interpretation activities were found to be critical to successful knowledge transfer. Gatekeepers reported acting as translator/interpreter, an essential role which demanded specialised skills. The nature of this role is outlined, with reference to a staged model for knowledge transfer that emerged from the research project. The translator/interpreter role required gatekeepers to engage in active and continuous conversion of knowledge to meet the differing needs of a range of recipients. This helped to increase the overall absorptive capacity of participating organisations. Implications of these findings for research and practice are outlined. © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.