Article
Передавая рецепты: как распространяются пользовательские инновации
This article focuses on the “domestication” of hard disk drives’ technologies and the development of the data recovery market in Post-Soviet Russia. Drawing on 3.5 years ethnographic research with one data recovery service center in Moscow and on 12 in-depth narrative semi-structured interviews with technicians in Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don and Minsk, I argue that lead users were centre players in these developments. I narrow and specify E. von Hippel’s definition of lead users, stressing as main characteristics their abilities to invent and to materialize their inventions to create new marketplaces through commercialization of their technological innovations (or, in other words, the ability to complete an innovation cycle by themselves). The questions I pose in this article are: 1. Who were those lead users who invented data recovery as a new service in Russia? 2. In which directions did they transfer their innovations? 3. Which ways and means did they use? To address these questions, the article proceeds through five sections and examines the social basis of data recovery and the history of this field; the practices of transferring innovation vertically (to producers; “invention”), horizontally (to other lead users; “objectification”) and downwards (to domestic users; “commercialization”); the dynamics of data recovery as a “cultural recipe”. To analyze data, I have adopted some grounded theory techniques, thus the result of my undertaking is a “theory” which explains data recovery market development as an evolution of users’ cultural recipes. The article concludes with an assumption that, in Russia, certain innovations in other commercial or industrial fields (for example, automobile electronics) could be initiated by lead users and organized along similar lines to data recovery.
Today the increasing number of constant consumers is a strategic aim for any organization which is possible to be achieved only under condition of continuous perfection of organizational activity quality. If the service representation doesn't correspond to the consumers’ expectations they lose their interest to the service organization, if it does correspond or surpass their expectations they probably would readdress to service provider. For this reason the service organization should more precisely reveal consumers requirements and expectations, namely provider should constantly measure its service quality.
In the given work approaches by the Russian and foreign researchers in the field of quality management are studied and analyzed in details, namely:
- approaches to the «service quality» definition;
- the basic components of service quality management process;
- service organization quality model.
The purpose of research work consists of ISQM (Innovation System of Quality Management) model creation taking into account features of TCS providing, which, in turn, is targeted on TCS company purposes achievement in the field of quality by means of:
- setting the control values of TCS quality indicators;
- measuring of the reached results and their comparison with expected results;
- effective management decision making as a result of carrying out the analysis of managerial activity in the field of quality on the basis of the report containing recommendations for the company activity improvement, prepared due to the results of measuring and collecting quality indicators.
At the present level of development the information and knowledge become important engines of global economic growth and key elements of national strate-gy for increasing country’s competitiveness in the international market. The article is aimed to analyze two monitoring systems of innovation capacity (ICT Development Index and Networked Readiness Index) as the indicators of development of knowledge economy and information society.
The book describes the concepts of culture and language in the work of the austrian writer Franz Kafka.
The article deals with the concept of the development of society as an innovative. The author puts forward the assumption of the formation of discursive anthropocentric economy, new predictive models of innovative communication.
The study of existing monitoring systems is topical, because at the present level of development the transition to information society and knowledge economy becomes one of the key elements of national strategy aimed to increase country's competitiveness in the international market. There are many index systems that study the nature of this phenomenon and compare countries by the level of digital development. To ensure objective evaluation of innovation capacity the analysis of current monitoring systems applied in measuring the development of ICT and e-readiness together with data collection was suggested.
In the modern economic reality the level of competitiveness of entire countries and national economies depends on innovative activity in the industry and technology. The present article analyzes the diffusion of clusters model in international experience and the spread of spin-offs model as an effective solution for clusters’ efficiency increasing. A methodological proposal for evaluating of clusters’ competitiveness is formulated.
Presents over twenty case studies drawn from practical experience ; Demonstrates how success is measured, providing reader with tools for implementation; Organized around five themes with specific comments for case comparisons from experts in the field; Introduces readers to several contexts that can be applied in various situations; Resource for further study of service innovation
Case Studies in Service Innovation provides the reader fresh insight into how innovation occurs in practice, and stimulates learning from one context to another. The volume brings together contributions from researchers and practitioners in a celebration of achievements with the intention of adding to the wider understanding of how service innovation develops. Each case presents a brief description of the context in which the innovation occurred, the opportunity that led to the innovation and an overview of the innovation itself, also addressing how success was measured, what success has been achieved to date and providing links to further information.
The book is organized around five major themes, each reflecting recognized sources of service innovation: Business Model Innovation: new ways of creating, delivering or capturing economic, social, environmental and other types of value; The Organization in its Environment: an organization engaging beyond its own boundaries, with public private partnerships, sourcing knowledge externally, innovation networks, and open or distributed innovation; Innovation Management within an Organization: an organization actively encouraging innovation within its own boundaries using project teams, internal governance of innovation, and methods or tools that stimulate innovation; Process Innovation: changes in service design and delivery processes, such as consumer led innovation or consumers as part of the innovation process, service operations management, and educational processes; Technology Innovation: the use of technology, including ICT enabled innovation, ICTs that are themselves innovative and support the delivery of new services, new ICT services, new ways of delivering services associated with ICT products, and technology other than ICT.
The final part of the book is given to four extended cases allowing for a more in-depth treatment of innovation within a complex service system. The extended cases also illustrate two important and growing trends, firstly the need for, and benefits of, a more customer centric approach to service innovation and secondly the need for better understanding of public services and the role of public-private partnerships in identifying and achieving innovation
A successful realization of the Russia and Belarus Union State’s project SKIF made a strong impulse to supercomputing in both countries. The scale of positive externalities to a large degree was made of the selected open model of intellectual property management. This made supercomputing available not only to the large corporations and state R&D bodies, but to the small and medium business as well. This resulted in the rise of innovation implementation and their contribution to modernization of Russian and Belarusian economies on the whole.
Several approaches to the concept of fatherhood present in Western sociological tradition are analyzed and compared: biological determinism, social constructivism and biosocial theory. The problematics of fatherhood and men’s parental practices is marginalized in modern Russian social research devoted to family and this fact makes the traditional inequality in family relations, when the father’s role is considered secondary compared to that of mother, even stronger. However, in Western critical men’s studies several stages can be outlined: the development of “sex roles” paradigm (biological determinism), the emergence of the hegemonic masculinity concept, inter-disciplinary stage (biosocial theory). According to the approach of biological determinism, the role of a father is that of the patriarch, he continues the family line and serves as a model for his ascendants. Social constructivism looks into man’s functions in the family from the point of view of masculine pressure and establishing hegemony over a woman and children. Biosocial theory aims to unite the biological determinacy of fatherhood with social, cultural and personal context. It is shown that these approaches are directly connected with the level of the society development, marriage and family perceptions, the level of egality of gender order.