Life Cycle of Innovations in International Media Discourse (by the Example of InoSMI Project)

The article presents the results of a research into characteristic features of innovations in the context of international media discourse. Basing on related researches in management, political studies, and sociology, the author studies stages of the life cycle of innovations in media discourse, which makes the interdisciplinary character of the work its novelty. Despite being actively used in media agenda, the theme of innovations in media discourse is understudied, and the majority of related researches are done in the field of political studies, sociology, marketing, culturology, and management. Moreover, an innovation cannot exist separately from its life cycle. After the final stage, a product, idea, or service, etc., stops being an innovation and takes another status. At every stage of its life cycle, an innovation has different features, which is reflected in media discourse. The public’s perception of innovations and innovativeness is dependent on the character of the media space. Therefore, due to the power of media impact, studying stages of the life cycle of an innovation in media discourse is particularly important. This explains the topicality of the research. Using the media materials of InoSMI project, the author carries out a qualitative content analysis of international media context aimed at studying the life cycle of innovations and actors at each stage of the cycle. The analysis helps to identify the most often mentioned stages of the life cycle of innovations and their actors, and provides for making an assumption about the character of international media discourse related to the subject of the study.

New Product Idea Selection in the Fuzzy Front End of Innovation: A Fuzzy Best-Worst Method and Group Decision-Making Process

New product development (NPD) is essential to most business organizations to create new values and protect existing values for maintaining high profitability and sustainability. However, the success of NPD projects is deemed to be difficult and challenging owing to high organizational complexity, uncertain business environment, and time-critical innovation. Under the smart manufacturing paradigm, NPD is an active research area to establish effective measures through the adoption of systematic approaches so as to facilitate idea management in the fuzzy front end for the product innovation. In this paper, the domain of new product idea selection is focused on and enhanced by means of the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach, in which multiple criteria and sub-criteria can be considered in the selection process. Among a number of MCDM approaches, the fuzzy set theory and best-worst method (BWM) are integrated as the fuzzy BWM in this study to structure the new product idea selection process under a group decision-making process. The hierarchy structure for the new product idea selection is also established to consider the perspectives of finance, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, and sustainability. Overall speaking, this study contributes to the field of NPD through overcoming the new product idea selection problem, while the group decision-making process is incorporated into the fuzzy BWM.

Development of a Creative Manual Book for Science Youth Scientific Group

One of the world of education components that specifically aims to develop students' creativity is the Youth Scientific group (KIR). Based on the case studies, information was obtained that KIR participants generally still have difficulty generating ideas. Some of the factors that caused KIR participants' difficulty in creating ideas were lack of knowledge and the absence of a guide to guide them in making ideas. The purpose of this study was to develop a technical guidebook for making ideas for KIR students. Products are developed through development research in a sequence of steps: Define, design, and develop. This study provides the results that the product being developed has the following characteristics: 1) consists of 2 parts, namely the formation of new cognitive schemes and the formation of product idea designs, 2) The section on the formation of the New Cognitive Schema is designed based on the cognitive load theory, 3)The product idea design section is designed based on the Creative Process Learning theory. The product developed has a score with a very decent category but needs to be given significant improvements in the aspect of indicators and the addition of entrepreneurship material and SWOT analysis.

Characteristics of Successful Securities Crowdfunding Campaigns in the United States

Title III of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) enacted by the U.S. Congress enables a new crowdfunding source of investment capital for entrepreneurs and a new opportunity for all investors (Regulation CF). Given the information asymmetry, the SEC requires that managers provide information to investors (Form C). Using this information, this research tests whether business attributes, financial risks, and offering characteristics are associated with successful crowdfunding efforts for 277 offerings originating during 2016-2017 and closed as of May 2018. The following attributes are positively correlated with funding success: product idea; prior managerial experience with startups; financial risks reported by management; availability of an independent CPA review; and, especially for companies reporting revenue, accounting risk measurements. Finally, the funding intermediary chosen is important and some were more successful than others. Overall, the results provide new insights concerning characteristics of successful security-based crowdfunding offerings.

Bionic organization as a stage of production enterprise development in a digital transformation process

This article embraces a concept of bionic organization as a form of production enterprise which main attribute is an integration of digital technologies in the management processes and the production lines from the product idea to its delivery to a consumer. Digital technologies reinforce human competencies and abilities of analogous machines, playing a role of independent component of executive and production system. At the same time, digital technologies become full-fledged members of the organization, enriching it with bionic treats. An idea of full human substation in production management with digital technologies is far from being practicable, but a tendency towards this change is quite clear. The main purpose of this this article is to discover main features of bionic organization as an intermediate evolution stage on the way of full human substitution with machines and digital technologies. Additionally, the article focuses on the interconnections between bionic organization, digital transformation, digital maturity and management system. This analysis was made for a production enterprise set upon a way to deep digital transformation.

Food Product Development: From the Consumers Aspect

Product development involves the design activities of “new” products as well as the functionalization of the valid ones. This concept is highly associated with the demand of the consumers towards the product such as health promotion or sensory attraction. Moreover, consumers are the decider of product survival in the market. Therefore, with the sensory testing, we assess the consumers’ response which indicates the market success of the developed food. Hence, a food developer who comes up with a new product idea (including new and functionalization of the current one) needs to make sure of the consumer acceptance via sensory evaluation tasks. Sensory evaluation practices are usually the final and the determinant step of product success and acceptance. A comprehensive sensory practice should be well structured in terms of technical assessment as well as correct panelist group selection to be representative enough to give consumer’s response. Even though this aim sound to be a straight forward concept, the eating activity is quite complex and dynamic to mimic on the selected panelists as a consumer. So far, investigators collected enough data to understand only some of the senses however, sensory understanding of the several sense involving parameters like texture and aroma is still uncovered. This talk is established to understand the importance of the sensory approach which is done in practice to decide on the new/functionalized product to be placed in the market or not for business success.

Thematic Ideation: A Superior Supplementary Concept in Creativity and Innovation

New products improve competitiveness through their creativity and innovativeness. Creativity and innovativeness are parallel yet non-identical concepts; newly introduced products are either somewhat thematically similar or taxonomically similar to the existing products. There is a need for the explication of creativity and innovativeness as separate or as unified concepts in newly developed products, in particular, thematic products. A mixed-method design was adopted to establish definitions and components of creativity and innovativeness in the ideas presented at the innovation summit through 489 perceptual reports on 14 feature-based and theme-based product ideas. On the whole, three components—originality, value, and commercial appeal—were derived and tested. Results revealed the significance of originality as a major component of creativity and innovativeness in all products. Perceived value was significantly related to originality in both taxonomic and thematic products. Originality and value predicted creativity whereas innovativeness was predicted by commercial appeal along with originality and value in all products. The underlying purchase intention in taxonomic and thematic product ideas was the product’s relatedness with lifestyle. A product idea to be implemented in business as innovation was found to be dependent on its creativity and commercial appeal. This asserted three factors mandatory at the Fuzzy Front End (FFE), namely, originality, value, and commercial appeal. Discussion includes the interpretation of results and future directions.

Advancing Palm Kernel Business in Nigeria through Effective Marketing

Many Entrepreneurs just delve into business in the name of starting a business without first finding out the best production methodology for increase output and the various ways that the product and its bye products can be disposed for more profit. Palm kernel is a money spinning venture. The process involve in palm oil extraction from the palm fruit is still crude. Marketing starts with product idea generation. The research therefore is aimed at finding out the best palm kernel separation method that will give the highest production volume. This will eventually help the organization meet market demand that will lead to the desired sales volume/profit. Three palm kernel separation methods were carried out using 25 kg of palm kernel for each. Time taken for these operations was taken. Thorough put was calculated. The result obtained was that mechanical cracking machine with pneumatic separation has a faster operation time and higher output than two other separation methods. This study discovered about fourteen (14) potential business areas for investors and entrepreneurs in palm kernel ventures. A graph of annual palm kernel availability and price fluctuation was developed. The recommendations emanating from the analysis are: (1) Investors, entrepreneurs and processors are advised to go for mechanical cracking and pneumatic separation machine for efficiency and effectiveness (2) Buy palm kernel nut by April, May and June then sell off their stored palm kernel nut to make profit by September to October, and (3) Should reevaluate their investment on palm kernel business against the coming year by December.