Search results for "new product"
showing 10 items of 101 documents
A preliminary study of agility in business and production - Cases of early-stage hardware startups
2018
[Context] Advancement in technologies, popularity of small-batch manufacturing and the recent trend of investing in hardware startups are among the factors leading to the rise of hardware startups nowadays. It is essential for hardware startups, companies that involve both software and hardware development, to be not only agile to develop their business but also efficient to develop the right products. [Objective] We investigate how hardware startups achieve agility when developing their products in early stages. [Methods] A qualitative research is conducted with data from 20 hardware startups. [Result] Preliminary results show that agile development is known to hardware entrepreneurs, howe…
Licensing policies for a new product
2005
This paper studies licensing policies for the owner of a new product and addresses their welfare impact in the assessment of market failures. We show that the best licensing policy for the patent holder is fixed fee licensing with an exclusive territory clause. Consumers are also better off with fixed fees but do not prefer the exclusive territory clause. Social welfare is higher under exclusive territories when fixed costs are not too large. As for efficiency, the number of licences in the private market equilibrium falls short of the socially optimal solution. Our analysis discloses that (i) any policy measures aimed at enhancing the diffusion of technology, in terms of the number of lice…
Modeling, simulation and design optimization of a hoisting rig active heave compensation system
2012
Published version of an article in the journal: International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13042-012-0076-x The objective of this paper is to present an approach in developing a virtual active heave compensation system for a draw-works on a hoisting rig. A virtual system enables quicker overall product development time of a physical system as well as flexibility in optimizing the design parameters. Development of the virtual system started with the modelling of the draw-works and hoisting rig dynamics. Simulations of this model were run in two operational modes while subject to a sinusoidal wave: heave compensa…
Sensory testing in new product development: Working with older people
2015
Very few studies today validate the use of various sensory tools among elderly subjects, although the population is ageing rapidly. This chapter deals with applied sensory assessment in the food sector. It first presents heterogeneity factors in this population: physical and psychological health and dependency, decrease of chemosensory capacities, changes in oral-motor skills and modifications of cognitive abilities. Then, a study aiming at comparing the capacity of young and more or less dependent elderly subjects to use a discrete scale (discriminatory power and repeatability) in a monadic sequential presentation is described. Finally, recommendations are given about the cases where a pan…
Birthing Support for Midwives and Mothers - ErgonomicTesting and Product Development
2012
Purpose: To further develop an ergonomic birthing support for increasing comfortable postures for midwives and mothers during deliveries. Methods and Results: First, the prototype of the birthing support and six birthing postures were tested with 8 midwives, 2 physicians, and 10 pregnant women in the last month of their pregnancy using visual analogue scales (VASs) and the System Usability Scale (SUS). According to the midwives and mothers, the best birthing postures were those with the mother sitting on the birthing support with the bed crosswise or the mother laying on her side on the bed with her leg on the birthing support. In the second stage of the study, 4 experts carried out an expe…
Network embeddedness and new product development in the biopharmaceutical industry: The moderating role of open innovation flow
2015
This paper explores the role of centrality and structural holes positions on the likelihood to develop new products and the moderating role of the open innovation flow, a measure of the net knowledge flow crossing the firm’s boundaries, on the aforementioned relation. We argue that network positions provide the information content to the firm, whilst open innovation flow describes how the firm uses such content, thus the combination of these two concepts has a significant impact on new product development. We test the theoretical framework on a large sample of 544 public companies and data from 1758 agreements among 1890 bio-pharmaceutical firms through the period 2006–2010. Our results sho…
Robust Ergonomic Virtual Design
2009
Since early development phases of a new industrial product, realistic simulations can be performed in virtual environment to study the human-machine interaction. In a virtual lab it is possible to make experiments to assess the ergonomics of the new product with manikins simulating the human body, and dealing with the problem of anthropometrical variation. Although such sophisticated tools are available, there is still need of a methodo-logical framework aimed at efficiently organizing the experiments in virtual lab. This paper provides an overview of the Robust Ergonomic Virtual Design (REVD), a methodology developed by the authors in the course of the last years. It allows obtaining produ…
Analysis of User Needs for the Redesign of a Postural Seat System
2009
The identification and translation of customer needs early in the design process is a major challenge for product design researchers. Some needs are explicit and customers can state them very clearly. Other needs are implicit, so customers cannot express them, e.g., those pertaining to the affective and emotional sphere. In this work, we describe the methods most commonly used to capture explicit and emotional customer needs, and the traditional ways in which they are used. Moreover, an integration of QFD and Kansei engineering, a simplification of Kano methodology, and a new attribute weighing methodology based on the “choice time” are discussed for the design of an innovative postural sea…
From the crowd to the market: The role of reward-based crowdfunding performance in attracting professional investors
2017
Abstract We focus on new technology-based entrepreneurial ventures engaging in reward-based crowdfunding and examine the effect of their performance in such funding channel on the likelihood of securing subsequent funding from professional investors. We also study how this effect is influenced by the presence of patents granted for the new product idea and the entrepreneur social capital. Results from a sample of technology projects launched on Kickstarter demonstrate that pledging a higher amount of money in crowdfunding can ignite professional investors’ interest and thus help secure subsequent funding. However, this positive evidence is effective only when complemented by the presence of…
Measuring innovation in long product development cycle industries: an insight in biotechnology
2009
This paper examines and measures innovation in the context of biotechnology firms by analysing the link between R&D, innovation performance and organisational growth. We conceptualise innovation performance as a latent construct with two dimensions: innovation efficacy and innovation efficiency. We use structural equations modelling to test the hypotheses on a data set from the biotechnology industry. Results support our innovation performance conceptualisation which is found to be especially useful to measure innovation in industries with long product development cycles. Findings also underline the importance of R&D knowledge creation for biotechnology firms.