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

Doing qualitative research: a practical handbook, by David Silverman, Los Angeles, Sage, 2010, 456 pp., AU$65.00, ISBN 978-1-84860-033-1, ISBN 978-1-94960-034-8. Available in Australia and New Zeal...

Doing qualitative research: a practical handbook

http://library.um.ac.id/free-contents/downloadpdf.php/buku/focus-groups-as-qualitative-research-by-morgan-david-l-11476.pdf

Focus groups as qualitative research / by Morgan, David L.

https://publikationen.bibliothek.kit.edu/1000039918/3024499

Building Information Modeling (BIM) for existing buildings — Literature review and future needs

Megaprojects and Risk. An Anatomy of Ambition

The success of Public Private Partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects is highly dependent on the demand for the services provided by these projects. The demand forecasting process is complex because of the influence of various economic, social and technical factors and the interrelationships among them. In addition, this process is dynamic in nature as many of these factors are time dependent. Current models used for demand forecasting have failed to account for many of these aspects. Among various modeling techniques, System Dynamics (SD) is a promising method for modeling systems with complexity and dynamicity features. The modeling process using SD can be broadly divided into Qualitative System Dynamics and Quantitative System Dynamics. This paper describes the development stages of a conceptual Qualitative SD model for demand forecasting which include: factors identification, creating Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs), and the CLDs validation. As expert knowledge and perceptions are key requirements to develop a realistic SD model, the paper will emphasis on the knowledge elicitation involved in the development stages. The paper articulates different approaches used to collect and analyze perceptions solicited from experts in toll road projects and the demand forecasting discipline in order to build this qualitative model. In addition, it depicts how the information has been integrated into the different stages of the modeling process. The developed qualitative model will form the basis for the development of the quantitative SD model aiming at improving the practices of demand forecasting in PPP toll road projects. DOI 10.5592/otmcj.2013.2.4 Research paper

/pdf/a-system-dynamics-based-model-for-demand-forecasting-in-ppp-r0jjk3b5xc.pdf

A system dynamics-based model for demand forecasting in PPP infrastructure projects ? a case of toll roads

Purpose




With the rapid development in the internet technologies, the applications of big data in construction have seen considerable attention. Currently, there are many input/output modes of capturing construction knowledge related to all construction stages. On the other hand, building information modelling (BIM) systems have been developed to help in storing various structured data of buildings. However, these systems cannot fully capture the knowledge and unstructured data used in the operation of building systems in a usable format that uses the intelligent capabilities of BIM systems. Therefore, this research aims to adopt the concept of big data and develop a spoken dialogue BIM system to capture buildings operation knowledge, particularly for building maintenance and refurbishment.




Design/methodology/approach




The proposed system integrates cloud-based spoken dialogue system and case-based reasoning BIM system.




Findings




The system acts as an interactive expert agent that seeks answers from the user for questions specific to building maintenance problems and helps searching for solutions from previously stored knowledge cases. The practices of monitoring and maintaining buildings performance can be more efficient by the retrieval of relevant solutions from the captured knowledge to new problems when maintaining buildings components. The developed system enables easier capture and search for solutions to new problems with a more comprehensive retrieval of information.




Originality/value




Capturing multi-modes data into BIM systems using the cloud-based spoken dialogue systems will help construction teams use the high volume of data generated over building lifecycle and search for the most suitable solutions for maintenance problems. This new area of research also contributes to the current BIM systems by advancing their capabilities to instantly capture and retrieve knowledge of operations instead of only information.

/pdf/spoken-dialogue-bim-systems-an-application-of-big-data-in-58ktse6l3o.pdf

Spoken dialogue BIM systems - an application of Big Data in construction

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore stakeholders’ expectations in utilising PPP financial models in order to ensure that each stakeholder understands the expectations of others before negotiating and reaching contract agreement by all the stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach – Five common sets of 40 expectations have been identified through a systematic research approach, and their relative significances were verified based on pilot studies in India and the UK and expert opinion solicited worldwide through a structured questionnaire survey. The survey responses were evaluated by using statistical analyses. Findings – The most important stakeholders’ expectations in utilising PPP financial models were identified at five different stages in a project. They are bankable (at the pre-proposal stage), assessment of project's ability to carry senior debt (at the contract negotiation stage), sensitivity analysis for key commercial issues (at the finance-raising stage), debt service evaluation t...

Stakeholders’ expectations in utilising financial models for public-private partnership projects

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the complex interrelationships among thedifferent variables purporting to explain household energy consumption and carbon emissions. Energy consumption and carbon emissions in dwellings have been argued to be a complex socio-technical problem that involves interaction of many variables that are interdependent on one another. Design/methodology/approach – The paper investigates the explanatory power of these variables through the use of structural equation modelling which has the advantage of handling complex real-life problems that cannot be modelled by other multivariate analysis methods. This study uses the publicly available datasets of the Scottish House Condition Survey and the Scottish Environmental Attitudes and Behaviours datasets. Findings – This paper found that floor area, energy efficiency in terms of standard assessment procedure value, number of occupants in the dwelling, household income, dwelling age, consumption behaviour and age of househ...

Ibrahim Motawa

Papers

A system dynamics-based model for demand forecasting in PPP infrastructure projects ? a case of toll roads

Spoken dialogue BIM systems - an application of Big Data in construction

Stakeholders’ expectations in utilising financial models for public-private partnership projects

Structural equation modelling of energy consumption in buildings

The common problems facing the building maintenance departments