Entrepreneurship and Innovation Today

When will the recession / depression end ? Part 25 New Financial sector Business Models or New Creative Workarounds?

I listened to US president Obama last Wednesday on the White House lawn, just before AIG’s CEO Liddy testified before the American congress on AIG’s bonuses. The significant point that Obama made at the end of his speech, was a fundamental change or shift to the status quo. Coincidentally or not, most mainstream newspaper reports missed this key idea and quote.

“People are rightly outrages about these particular [AIG] bonuses. But just as outrageous is the culture that these bonuses are a symptom of., that have existed for far too long. A situation where excess greed, excess compensation, excess risk-taking have all made us vulnerable and left us holding the bank. And  one of the message that I want to send is as we  get out of this crisis, as we work towards getting ourselves out of recession, I hope that Wall Street and the marketplace don't think that we can return to business as usual. The business models that created a lot of paper wealth but not real wealth in this country and have now resulted in crisis can't be the model for economic growth going forward." said Obama.

The New Yorker magazine featured this cartoon (on the right) earlier this month (March 9, 2009) , which is a more likely scenario for the financial sector….One business person says to the other….These new regulations will fundamentally change the way we get around them…

Walter Derzko

Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Hard Times Golden Opportunities

Creativity in Teams and Organizations, call for papers, HICSS-43

HICSS-43 Call for papers for the minitrack on:

“CREATIVITY IN TEAMS AND ORGANIZATIONS”

Part of the Collaboration Systems and Technology Track

of the Forty-Third Annual Hawai'i International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS) Kauai, HI- January 5 - 8, 2010

Papers are invited for the minitrack on "CREATIVITY IN TEAMS AND ORGANIZATIONS" as part of the Collaboration Systems and Technology Track at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS).

Innovation is a critical force in organizational performance and survival. Changes in technology, globalization, and increased competition have all created an environment in which creativity and innovation are needed in order to cope with situational and economic pressures and frequent changes. Designers and Developers of organizational systems must therefore innovate almost continuously to keep the organization aligned with such changes. Creativity is a critical pre-condition for innovation. Generating novel and creative ideas are the key to innovation and growth in every organization today. Providing employees, customers and partners with tools to think creatively has been proven to increase innovation in organizations. Research shows that organizations which have established skill-bases and tools for creativity outperform the competition in terms of revenue, rolling out new products, innovation and growth. Though organizations deploy groups for most creative processes, there has been little research in the area of group creativity. Most creative research is focused on individual factors affecting creativity. Many challenges that arise from pursuing creativity in teams remain unexplored.

This minitrack provides one of the key international platforms on which the following issues can be discussed:

1.       Methods & techniques to improve creativity in co-located and distributed groups

2.       Design and Evaluation of Systems and technology for enhancing creativity

3. Challenges and opportunities for creativity in teams

4.       Theoretical foundations for creativity at individual, group and organizational levels

5.       Practical approaches to foster creativity at individual, group and organizational levels

6. The creation and implementation of innovations in teams and organizations

7.  Factors affecting creativity in teams and organizations

8. Building team-based organizations

9.   Multi-level issues of creativity in teams and organizations

10.                      Research linking individual creativity to group level creativity and organizational level innovation

11.                      Multi-disciplinary approaches to creativity

12.                      Creative collaboration between business partners and customers (e.g. co-creation of products and services)

Thus, papers are welcome that contain original ideas on how to improve creativity and innovation through all phases of problem-solving:  Understanding a problem, devising potential solutions, evaluating alternatives, making choices, making plans, taking action, and after-action review. We seek papers that suggest methodical, technical, theoretical, or practical improvements for realizing creative ideas in the workforce as innovations, for an organization cannot benefit from its creativity until its ideas are implemented.

There are no preferred methodological stances for this minitrack: this minitrack is open to both qualitative and quantitative research, to research from a positivist, interpretivist, or critical perspective, to studies from the lab, from the field, design-oriented or developmental in nature.

Themes and topics of relevance to this minitrack include, but are not limited to (related topics not listed are especially welcome):

Creativity techniques and approaches

·         Creativity methods & techniques to improve creativity in co-located and distributed groups

·         Measuring the effectiveness of creativity techniques and approaches

·         Creativity in patterns of collaboration (divergence, convergence, organization, evaluation, and consensus building)

·         Reusability, trainability, predictability, and transferability of creativity techniques and approaches

·         Capturing best practices on creativity

·         Analyzing the nature of the evolving artifacts

Technologies to support creativity

·         Theories, guidelines, and strategies for designing creative technologies and systems

·         Proof of concepts – examples of breakthrough technologies and systems supporting creativity

·         Technologies that support creativity in specific critical collaboration processes, e.g.

·         Requirements specification & analysis

·         Focus groups

·         Delphi processes

·         Collaborative planning

·         Strategy building

·         Collaborative writing

·         Communities and Web 2.0

·         Mobile Creativity

Creativity in teams and organizations

·         Analyzing the nature of creative teams and its evolving processes

·         Training work group members and work group leaders to think and act creatively

·         Innovation management in collaborative contexts

·         Success factors for diffusing creativity techniques, approaches, and technologies in organizations

·                            Factors affecting creativity in teams, organizations, and value networks

·                            Building team-based organizations

·         Challenges and opportunities for creativity in teams

·         Practical approaches to foster creativity at individual, group and organizational levels

·         Theories on collaborative and organizational creativity

·         Studies on the efficacy of interventions intended to introduce creativity approaches and technologies in an organization

·         Enhancing creativity by appropriate knowledge management

·         Creativity in communities and user-generated content

·         Creativity in the “enterprise 2.0”

·         Creativity in ad-hoc-groups

Theoretical issues in creativity and innovation

·         Theories of creative problem solving

·         Theories of creative decision making

·         Creativity in different socio-cultural environments

·         Effects of organizational culture on creativity

·         Frameworks for evaluating creativity in the field and in the lab

·         Theoretical approaches to understand the effect of individuals, teams, organizations, and the broader environment on creativity

·         Instruments and measurements for creativity and innovation

·         Group tasks to study creativity

·         Theoretical relationships between creativity and organizational productivity

MINITRACK COORDINATORS:

Roni Reiter-Palmon

University of Nebraska at Omaha

Department of Psychology

Director of Research, Center for Collaboration Science

1110 South 67^th street, Omaha, NE 68182-0116 USA

Phone: (402) 554-4081 

E-mail: [email protected]

Triparna de Vreede (primary contact)

University of Nebraska at Omaha

Department of Psychology

Research Associate, Center for Collaboration Science
1110 South 67^th street, Omaha, NE 68182-0116 USA

Phone: (402) 554-2557

E-mail: [email protected]

Gerhard Schwabe

University of Zurich

Department of Informatics

Chair of Information Management

Binzmühlestrasse 14, CH-8050 Zürich

Tel: +41-44-63-5 43 05

Email: [email protected]

The purpose of HICSS is to provide a forum for the interchange of ideas, research results, development activities, and applications among academicians and practitioners in computer-based systems sciences. The conference consists of tutorials, advanced seminars, presentations of accepted papers, open forum, tasks forces, and plenary and distinguished guest lectures. There is a high degree of interaction and discussion among the conference participants because the conference is conducted in a workshop-like setting.

Instructions for submitting papers:

1.       Submit an electronic copy of the full paper, 10 pages including title page, abstract, references and diagrams using the review system available at the HICSS site, make sure that the authors’ names and affiliation information has been removed to ensure an anonymous review.

2.       Do not submit the paper to more than one minitrack. The paper should contain original material and not be previously published or currently submitted for consideration elsewhere.

3.       Provide the required information to the review system such as title, full name of all authors, and their complete addresses including affiliation(s), telephone number(s) and e-mail address(es).

4.       The first page of the paper should include the title and a (max) 300-word abstract.

DEADLINES:

·         May 15:                    OPTIONAL: Abstracts submitted to Minitrack Chairs for guidance, indication of appropriate content and to receive instructions on submitting full paper.

·         June 15:                   Full papers uploaded in the directory of the appropriate minitrack.

·         August 15:                Notification of accepted papers mailed to authors.

·         September 15:         Accepted manuscripts, camera-ready, uploaded; author(s) must register by this time.

Send all correspondence related to this minitrack to:

Triparna de Vreede

University of Nebraska at Omaha

Department of Psychology

Research Associate, Center for Collaboration Science
1110 South 67^th street, Omaha, NE 68182-0116 USA

Phone: (402) 554-2557

E-mail: [email protected]

Inaugural issue of Int'l J. of Strategic Bus. Alliances Vol. 1, No. 1, 2009

 I'd like to pass on the announcement from the editor-in-chief of a new academic journal that fills a gaping void.  Int'l J. of Strategic Bus. Alliances Vol. 1, No. 1, 2009--Walter Derzko

 

Dear Colleagues,

 

I am pleased to announce that the inaugural issue of International Journal of Strategic Business Alliances (IJSBA), has just been published. It is available online at IJSBA home page http://www.inderscience.com/ijsba. 

 

Please consider recommending subscription of IJSBA to your school library. A subscription form is available at  (http://www.inderscience.com/libraryform.html).

The table of contents of the journal is given below. I would welcome researchers to submit their papers on inter-firm partnership and collaboration to IJSBA. Paper submission guidelines are available at the journal’s home page.

Kind regards,

Refik Culpan

Editor-in-Chief 

 

Int. J. Strategic Business Alliances, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2009

Contents

1 Editorial: As we launch a new journal on business strategic alliances

Refik Culpan

4 A fresh look at strategic alliances: research issues and future directions

Refik Culpan

24 Interpartner harmony in strategic alliances: managing commitment and forbearance

T.K. Das and Rajesh Kumar

53 Community of firms: a new collaborative paradigm for open innovation and an analysis of Blade.org

Charles C. Snow, Doreen R. Strauss and Refik Culpan

73 Evolution of cooperation and dynamics of expectations – implications for strategic alliances

Susanne Royer and Roland Simons

89 A struggling international partnership: TNK-BP joint venture

A. Cemal Ekin and Thomas R. King

Book Review

107 Managing Network Resources by Ranjay Gulati

Ravi

Chinta