How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

This article examines the function of documents as a data source in qualitative research and discusses document analysis procedure in the context of actual research experiences. Targeted to research novices, the article takes a nuts‐and‐bolts approach to document analysis. It describes the nature and forms of documents, outlines the advantages and limitations of document analysis, and offers specific examples of the use of documents in the research process. The application of document analysis to a grounded theory study is illustrated.

Document Analysis as a Qualitative Research Method

Social Network Analysis

The circular economy concept has gained momentum both among scholars and practitioners. However, critics claim that it means many different things to different people. This paper provides further evidence for these critics. The aim of this paper is to create transparency regarding the current understandings of the circular economy concept. For this purpose, we have gathered 114 circular economy definitions which were coded on 17 dimensions. Our findings indicate that the circular economy is most frequently depicted as a combination of reduce, reuse and recycle activities, whereas it is oftentimes not highlighted that CE necessitates a systemic shift. We further find that the definitions show few explicit linkages of the circular economy concept to sustainable development. The main aim of the circular economy is considered to be economic prosperity, followed by environmental quality; its impact on social equity and future generations is barely mentioned. Furthermore, neither business models nor consumers are frequently outlined as enablers of the circular economy. We critically discuss the various circular economy conceptualizations throughout this paper. Overall, we hope to contribute via this study towards the coherence of the circular economy concept; we presume that significantly varying circular economy definitions may eventually result in the collapse of the concept.

Conceptualizing the circular economy: An analysis of 114 definitions

This paper is based on the premises that the purpose of engineering education is to graduate engineers who can design, and that design thinking is complex. The paper begins by briefly reviewing the history and role of design in the engineering curriculum. Several dimensions of design thinking are then detailed, explaining why design is hard to learn and harder still to teach, and outlining the research available on how well design thinking skills are learned. The currently most-favored pedagogical model for teaching design, project-based learning (PBL), is explored next, along with available assessment data on its success. Two contexts for PBL are emphasized: first-year cornerstone courses and globally dispersed PBL courses. Finally, the paper lists some of the open research questions that must be answered to identify the best pedagogical practices of improving design learning, after which it closes by making recommendations for research aimed at enhancing design learning.

Engineering Design Thinking, Teaching, and Learning

Exploiting suppliers in NPD: an empirical study

Do we really need standard operating procedures in sexual medicine

Association is a data development activity that greatly improves the ability of secondary users to contextualize and understand research data It is of such importance that the ERIM Project proposes a software tool to assist in the construction of associative data records, specifically using the Research Activity Information Development (RAID) modelling method The design requirements for such a tool are presented, with the focus on the context of its use, the user tasks the tool must support, and the functions that the tool must consequently perform

RAID Associative Tool Requirements Specification

Armand Hatchuel et Benoit Weil

Recent years have seen a lot of interest in how people use, generate, save and search paper and electronic documents. We build on this and related work to develop a method for profiling engineering documentation. Profiling provides information about 1) the varieties and types of engineering documents, 2) the strengths and weakness of document manifestations; 3) the patterns of document use within different types of engineering company. The method is composed of two elements. A set of facets for describing documents, and a framework with which to contextualize documents.

/pdf/toward-a-method-for-profiling-engineering-documentation-4jd5jr2su2.pdf

Chris McMahon

Papers

Exploiting suppliers in NPD: an empirical study

Do we really need standard operating procedures in sexual medicine

RAID Associative Tool Requirements Specification

Armand Hatchuel et Benoit Weil

Toward a method for profiling engineering documentation