With rapid growth of global competition, the design process is becoming more and more complex due largely to cross-functional team collaboration, dynamic design processes, and unpredictable design outcomes. Thus, it is becoming progressively more difficult to support and improve design activities effectively during a design process, especially from a collaboration perspective. Although a great deal of research pays attention to the support and improvement of design collaboration from multi-perspectives, little research attention has been directed at improving collaborative design by a performance measurement approach. In addition, many studies have demonstrated that performance measurement can improve design effectiveness significantly. Therefore, this PhD research focused on investigating ‘How to improve collaborative design via a performance measurement approach?’ A Design Performance Measurement (DPM) tool, which enables design managers and designers to measure and improve design collaboration during a design process, has been developed. The DPM tool can support the design team members in learning from performance measurement and, in turn, drive the design project towards the achievement of strategic objectives, and goes beyond monitoring and controlling them during the project development process. It is, thus, a motivating tool as well as a support tool for the development of product design. The proposed DPM tool has three novel components: • A DPM operation model, which integrates a hierarchical design team structure with a multi-feedback interaction performance measurement approach to support DPM operation in a design project team. • A DPM matrix, which enables collaborative design performance to be measured during a design process. • A DPM weighting application model to improve flexibility of the DPM tool by integrating DPM with the design project’s strategies, stage-based design objectives, and design staff’s job focuses and responsibilities. This tool has been positively evaluated through two industry case studies and a software-based simulation.

This dissertation includes three studies that examine the remarkable rise of China’s renewable energy industry and its technological contributions to the global industry. China has emerged as the world’s largest carbon emitter by a large margin, and many of its cities experience high levels of air pollution. The Chinese government has turned to wind – and later solar – as alternative power sources to help decarbonize its electricity system and ameliorate increasingly urgent air pollution problems. Through these efforts, China has markedly expanded the share of renewable energy in its energy mix, and in the process absorbed a fair amount of relatively advanced technology, establishing itself as a competitive location to manufacture clean power equipment. In short order China has bolstered its international standing as a renewable energy powerhouse. The first study evaluates the question of whether China's wind industry has become an important source of clean energy technology innovation. Results indicate that while China has delivered enormous progress in terms of wind capacity, the outcomes were more limited in terms of innovation and cost competitiveness. Chinese wind turbine manufacturers have secured few international patents and achieved moderate learning rates relative to the global industry’s historical learning rate. The success of China’s transition to a low-carbon energy system will be key to achieve the global level of emissions reductions needed to avoid large negative consequences from climate change. The second study shows that China made progress in bringing down the levelized cost of wind electricity and cost of carbon mitigation. However, widespread grid-connection issues and wind curtailment rates caused much higher-than-anticipated costs of renewable energy integration. China has emerged as the global manufacturing center for solar photovoltaic products, and Chinese firms have entered all stages of the supply chain in short order. The third study provides detailed expert assessments of the technological and nontechnological factors that led to the surprised success of China’s silicon photovoltaic industry. Expert judgments suggest that continued declines in in module and system costs and improvements in performance will allow solar photovoltaic to be competitive with fossil fuels in China.

The aim of this research is to develop an understanding of factors that enable innovation teams to conduct agile innovation work in an industrial context. The background and reason for this research are not only that innovation is necessary for companies that want to stay in business, but also that these companies need to increase the speed of their innovation work to stay competitive. Research has demonstrated that cross-functional (X-functional) innovation teams are fast and agile, and are therefore assumed to be suitable for these activities. Still, there is much knowledge to be gained. Prior research has identified factors that are seen as important from an organizational, team, and individual perspective to enable teams to work with potentially innovative outcomes. However, in cases where teams have been created with the purpose of conducting innovation work, i.e. innovation teams, problems related to e.g. performance and learning have occurred, and the innovation work has stopped shortly after conducted research projects due to the high level of complexity. The research question (RQ) that this thesis explores is the following: “Which innovation enablers are important for innovation teams when conducting agile innovation work in an industrial context?” Based on the RQ, two sub-questions are formulated and operationalized to answer the RQ. Qualitative data have been collected from five innovation teams in two phases. Two innovation teams in two small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were studied in the first phase to clarify the situation for innovation teams before innovation work is begun. In the second phase, which built on the first one, three innovation teams in a large industrial company were studied as they conducted three separate innovation projects. This research revealed five main findings: first, knowledge about important innovation enablers (Enablers) revealed from a literature study; second, the Innovation Team Model (ITM), demonstrating innovation teams before innovation work is begun in relation to the individuals and organization in a holistic way; third, the innovation team creation process (CIT-process), a stepwise process in how to create an innovation team; fourth, the innovation facilitator, who supports and facilitates the innovation team throughout the CIT-process and the innovation projects; and fifth, the Extended Innovation Process (EIP), an extension of the traditional innovation process by a pre-phase, i.e. a Preparation-phase, to gather and prepare the innovation teams for forthcoming work. The findings regarding the importance of the CIT-process, the EIP, and the innovation facilitator were unexpected. The findings formed the Innovation Team Framework (ITF), which represents all of the findings in relation to each other. The EIP is used as the basis for which the other innovation enablers are provided to the innovation teams through an innovation facilitator’s competence throughout the innovation project. The ITF is multidimensional: it could serve as a tool to describe both the simplicity and the complexity when creating an innovation team and forthcoming work and activities. All separate findings within this research contribute to prior research in individual ways, however, the ITF is the main scientific contribution of this study to Innovation management. Practitioners can use the ITF as a complement to already established methodologies for product development or similar; however one should be aware of the limited nature of the data set that served as the basis for analysis and development of the ITF. Further studies regarding the ITF and its detailed models and processes are suggested.

In recent years the concept of disruptive innovation has become central to business and innovation. A disruptive innovation can be defined as a product, service, technology, or business model that enters the market as either a low-end entrant, while simultaneously bringing some new attribute to the market; or as a new market disruptor that creates a distinct foothold in a previously undiscovered market. Much of the previous research into disruptive innovation has been through case study frameworks, and by selection of specific firms that fit the model. The question is, does the model have merits beyond expounding on past successes and failures across industries, and can it forecast successful disruptors? In this paper I analyze all Technology Sector firms that have entered the public markets between Jan 2002 - Dec 2013. I attempt to determine if a disruptive strategy leads to high growth performance for firms over a twelve quarter period. I also seek to find out if disruptive firms are market leading companies, in terms of having a high market capitalization. I find that a firm being a disruptor has a significant correlation to the growth factor across firms. I also find significance between a firm being a disruptor and holding a max market cap position above the 90th percentile in the sample. In a similar regression for the 80th percentile of firms, I do not find any significant correlation.

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As Chinese economy develops, service innovation has become a key element for which Chinese enterprises compete and upgrading of service industry all over China due to its influence on national economic competitiveness, among which the innovation of multi-agent service plays an important role in enterprises. This thesis mainly studies the concept of the Multi-agent Participate Model of Service Innovation and explores the strategic role and position of the model in communication industry. The purpose of this thesis includes two parts: firstly it studies the service innovation which multi-agent such as enterprises, customers and suppliers participate in so as to establish a new theoretical framework of such service innovation. Secondly, from the perspective of strategic management of enterprises, it considers the selection of Multi-agent Participate Model of Service Innovation in competitive strategies of the communication industry to clarify the strategic role and position of such model in management of the communication industry. Questionnaire and interview are two main data acquisition methods in this thesis. The author surveyed 100 employees from China Telecom with a questionnaire designed by herself. The data shows that customers’ demands for market and competitors’ competition in the market have a great influence on the innovation activities of enterprises. Some senior managers of China Telecom have been interviewed for this study. The interviews have shown the significance of Multi-agent Participate Model of Service Innovation in telecommunication industry and the Multi-agent Participate Model of Service Innovation can favorably be applied to telecommunication industry. The enterprises, customers, employees, managers and suppliers are of inseparable relationships in the model. As an innovation model of enterprises, Multi-agent Participate Model of Service Innovation can better mobilize enthusiasm of each participant of service innovation, and innovativeness of management service to clarify the strategic position of the model in enterprise management.

Companies’ new primary source for sustainable revenue growth comes from creating new innovations, rather than from mergers and acquisitions. Companies are finding it difficult to align internal support for the innovative creativity of teams with standard operating procedures. This research aims to discover how innovative teams contribute to forming development strategies that CPG firms use to create new products. Dimensions of the Theory of Team Climate in Innovation (TTCI) offer insight on the dimensions of development strategy. Specifically, by integrating the theories, a proposed model identifies the innovation team’s impact on the firm’s development strategies. Such understanding has the potential to increase firm profits, lower innovation costs, increase innovation speed, and support innovation training. To empirically test this model, employees responsible for product development in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries were surveyed. Structural modeling techniques were used to analyze the data. Findings indicate support for using TTCI to explain the compressed development strategy. Theoretical contributions include: 1) extending TTCI and its associated measures into tangible products industries, 2) refining and adding to TTCI measures, 3) extending the development strategies theory into tangible products industries, and 4) adding to the measures for development strategy. Future research appears fertile for methods and measures used in this study, and managers in CPG will benefit from an enhanced understanding of how to better structure innovation teams in alignment with a firm’s development strategy.

Organisations in all spheres of industries are facing constant change and need to be innovative to carve out a competitive market share. Knowledge is universally recognised as the organisation’s most valuable asset and strategic resource. The competitive business environment is impelling organisations to utilise and strengthen their knowledge capital in order to manage these changes. The relationship between knowledge management and innovation is not well understood and there is a need to explicitly examine this relationship explicitly. The objective of this study is to focus on the internal environment of listed companies in South Africa and determine to what extent knowledge management practices can contribute to an organisational culture of innovation and whether or not these practices are antecedents to innovative behaviour by knowledge workers Senior members in these companies were contacted by email and requested to access a questionnaire that was available via a Web address and complete the questionnaire. All completed questionnaires were analysed, using Item analysis, multiple regression and discriminant analysis. Results show that knowledge management practices: the organisation's science and technology human capital profile and the organisation is flexible and opportunistic are important predictors of innovativeness in organisations that are perceived to have an organisational culture of innovation.

Drawing upon data collected as part of the development of a Regional Innovation Strategy (RIS) for the West Midlands region of England, the current study presents an attempt to better understand the factors which may hinder or facilitate product innovation within small manufacturing firms. The focus is upon traditional and/or mature sectors rather than the high-technology small firms (HTSFs), or new technology-based firms (NTBFs), which feature disproportionately in academic and policy discussions. The study adopts a model of firm-level innovation which views innovation outputs as a function of, internal and external, resource inputs and enabling activities set within an institutional framework (broadly defined to encompass instituted behaviours). To this end, the study is influenced by Systems of Innovation (SI) approaches and is, in part, a critique of such approaches. More specifically, employing a sample of 228 small manufacturing firms (i.e. less than 250 full-time-equivalent employees), the thesis considers the relationship between 'innovativeness' and: firm strategy and structure; skills; finance; external linkages; and, performance. Empirical observations are set within a broader conceptual framework of learning, discovery and interaction. Moreover, given the context in which the data was collected, policy considerations loom large. In particular, the thesis considers the extent to which 'spatial' systems of innovation represent appropriate models for economic development, generally, and for the revitalisation of areas characterised by industrial decline and restructuring specifically.

"Innovate or die" is a long-standing creed in industry. Collaboration between companies is one route that businesses are pursuing with vigour, in an effort to gain competitive advantage. Few UK companies look to the dedicated research institutes (DRDCs) that exist as a source of innovation and industrial collaboration. This is despite the high regard bestowed on the creative abilities of the scientific teams at these centres of excellence. The purpose of this study is not to answer why this is so, but to help improve the chances of success when it occurs. The study was born out of a Government-funded LINK project, which evaluated the benefits, to project commercialisation, of conducting market research in tandem with the technical stages of R&D at public research institutes. Exposure to the professional cultures, work ethos and personal attitudes of team-members at the DRDCs and their commercial partners alerted the researcher to the challenges presented by technology transfer between such organisations. The literature is populated by studies that detail the stresses and strains of technology transfer. However, little attention has been directed exclusively at cases involving DRDCs. The primary aim of the study is to identify the driving forces behind technology transfer success from DRDCs to industry. It draws on the framework of the IMP Group to structure the context of investigation. It uses the findings of past studies to structure the content of investigation. A qualitative approach involving 13 detailed case studies constitutes its methodology. The cases cover both public and privately-funded DRDCs in the UK and the Netherlands, including examples from agricultural engineering, food sciences and biotechnology. The results highlight seven key antecedents as areas at which good management practice should be targeted. The study concludes by addressing the underlying mechanisms behind transfer process success. It finds that it is too simplistic to focus on any one of the three dimensions of technology transfer (organisational, human and environmental) 'at the exclusion of the others, as past studies have done. Successful transfer is found to depend on three cross-dimensional underlying mechanisms:- • checking the innovation is appropriate to the recipient • establishing a suitable transfer process • and providing an effective conduit for routing the knowledge transfer.