The most important thing for company to stay competitive is keeping innovative. When a new product launches to the market, you must keep developing another new product to move faster than the competitors. Besides, the human resource and equipment to develop new products must be a huge investment. The returns are not always guaranteed. Without R&D investment, the company will be out of competition in a short time.The employees always be encouraged to have innovative thinking with incentives. Sometimes, their creative ideas would bring unexpected effect and benefit the company. How does R&D personnel to have innovation? The purpose of the research is to understand the elements of innovation on R&D personnel. From the case company, Taiflex Scientific Co., Ltd, to have creative employees would bring tremendous benefits to the company. Every company would ask the R&D team to keep innovative and to develop new products continuously in order to be the leader in the market. If we can understand what the elements of the innovation, we can recruit creative personnel and speed up the development. While the company can launch new products quicker and raise up the company competitiveness, R&D team is the main weapon to fight the competitors. This is a case study of Taiflex Scientific Co., Ltd. There are 5 teams in the case company and all members are treated equally under same working environment and incentive policy. This study focus on the relationship between the innovative behavior of R&D personnel, also the team innovation performance and the influencing factors. The Purpose of the study is to understand the factors of the innovative behaviors on R&D persons and the relation between innovative team and performance. The factors are personality traits and KEYS. This study adopts Five Factor Model (Big Five) that includes Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness , Conscientiousness, on the personality traits. The study of organization factors adopts KEY structure. The result is concluded from questionnaire survey and interviews. The main factors on R&D innovation are personality traits, but team atmosphere would have only certain influence. From the case study, Openness to Experience and Extraversion have higher contribution to innovative behavior than Neuroticism, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. The freedom from the team atmosphere is the main factor for R&D personnel innovation. The challenging job is the second important factor. The case company shows that innovative team behavior has positive connection on R&D performance. The more creative team has better performance. Besides, personnel working experience and education would have certain effect. The purpose of the study is to know the requirements such as personality traits, working experience and education while recruiting R&D personnel. Then we can find the suitable person, have better performance and keep the company competitive.

<p>diffusion of innovative ideas: viral marketing</p>

Why do people engage in innovative behavior in the workplace? More specifically, what motivational reasons affect an employee?s decision to introduce new product ideas, apply new work methods, and suggest new ways to achieve objectives? Based on the efficiency-oriented perspective and the social-political perspective in understanding innovation, I hypothesize and test expected positive performance outcomes, expected image risks, and expected image gains as proximal determinants of individual innovative behavior at work, and examine how they mediate the effects of more distal antecedents. Adopting a contingency approach, I also examine the explanatory power of performance and image outcome expectations under different reward contingency situations. The theoretical framework was tested in a field study. I found a significant positive effect of expected positive performance outcomes and a significant negative effect of expected image risks on employee innovative behavior. Five distal antecedents (perceived organization support for innovation, supervisor relationship quality, innovativeness as job requirement, reputation as innovative, and dissatisfaction with the status quo) had indirect effects on innovative behavior by either increasing expectedpositive performance outcomes or reducing expected image risks, or both. The effect of expected positive performance outcomes was stronger when perceived performance-reward contingency was high. The effect of expected image risks was stronger when perceived image-reward contingency was high. Implications were discussed in terms of building a multiple-perspective framework for understanding innovative behavior and designing managerial strategies to encourage employee innovativeness.

diffusion of innovative ideas: viral marketing

Why do people engage in innovative behavior in the workplace? More specifically, what motivational reasons affect an employee?s decision to introduce new product ideas, apply new work methods, and suggest new ways to achieve objectives? Based on the efficiency-oriented perspective and the social-political perspective in understanding innovation, I hypothesize and test expected positive performance outcomes, expected image risks, and expected image gains as proximal determinants of individual innovative behavior at work, and examine how they mediate the effects of more distal antecedents. Adopting a contingency approach, I also examine the explanatory power of performance and image outcome expectations under different reward contingency situations. The theoretical framework was tested in a field study. I found a significant positive effect of expected positive performance outcomes and a significant negative effect of expected image risks on employee innovative behavior. Five distal antecedents (perceived organization support for innovation, supervisor relationship quality, innovativeness as job requirement, reputation as innovative, and dissatisfaction with the status quo) had indirect effects on innovative behavior by either increasing expectedpositive performance outcomes or reducing expected image risks, or both. The effect of expected positive performance outcomes was stronger when perceived performance-reward contingency was high. The effect of expected image risks was stronger when perceived image-reward contingency was high. Implications were discussed in terms of building a multiple-perspective framework for understanding innovative behavior and designing managerial strategies to encourage employee innovativeness.

Yes / We describe a study conducted during 2009-12 into innovative assessment practice, evaluating an assessed coursework task on a final year Medical Genetics module for Biomedical Science undergraduates. An authentic e-assessment coursework task was developed, integrating objectively marked online questions with an online DNA sequence analysis tool (BLAST), routinely used by NHS and research professionals. The aim was to combine the assessment of understanding of complex module learning outcomes with real-world authentic skills highly valued in the work place. This approach challenges the oft-heard accusation that online computer-marked tests can lack validity and authenticity in higher education. The study demonstrates the content and construct validity of this form of e-assessment, showing that careful question design, allied with integration with the real life BLAST tool, enables instructors to assess complex higher order understanding, and requires students to demonstrate skills relevant for the work place. A study of three years of test results and measures of internal consistency data also show the reliability of this assessment. In addition, the results of surveys of student opinion, and positive feedback from student module feedback questionnaires suggest that it is effective in terms of face validity.

Nowadays, organizations face the environment with highly change and uncertainty; therefore, organizations with traditional operating ways are not sufficiently equipped with competitive advantage. To survive, they keep changing in product and service. However, innovation does not merely mean new facilities and technologies; innovation mainly depends on whether the organization as a whole has innovative ideas. One of the most essential issues to organizations is to establish a continuous innovation system with adaptability and innovativeness, and it consists of two key levels: employee and organization. In individual level of, innovation will be a job for every employee; it will also be necessary for the organization itself to have the abilities of continuous innovation and to adjust to change at any time. The multiple regression analysis and hierarchical linear model (HLM) were used to analyze the relationships among employees¡¦ personality, organizational innovative climate, and employees¡¦ innovative behaviors to attempted to discover highly innovative employees in organizations. The results are presented as follows. 1. There was significantly positive influence of the personality of ¡§conscientiousness¡¨, ¡§extraversion¡¨, ¡§openness to experience¡¨ on ¡§individual innovative behavior¡¨ respectively ; but there is no significant influence of the personality of ¡§agreeableness¡¨, ¡§neuroticism¡¨ on individual innovative behavior respectively. 2. There was no significant influence of organizational innovative climate on individual innovative behavior. 3. The study examined the moderating effect of organizational level variable by slopes-as-outcomes mode. The result showed that organizational innovative climate had the moderating effect on conscientiousness and individual innovative behavior. The result indicated that the stronger extent of organizational innovative climate, the more employee with the personality of ¡§conscientiousness¡¨ tends to have more individual innovative behaviors.

Published Article / Personalised funerals are defined as modernised, innovative, customised and specialised types of funerals. Personalised funerals are performed to reflect the individual's life and what he or she has accomplished (Broadbent 2002; Wolcott 1999). The aim of this study was to establish if there is a niche in South Africa for graphic material for personalised funerals. The importance of a personalised funeral is to comfort the attendees and avoid the funeral being too traumatic. One of the main questions that arose during this study is how well South Africans react to the idea of personalised funerals? Traditional funerals are gradually being improved by means of creating a more modernised and customised funeral. Funerals now include pictures, photographs and even slide shows of the deceased person (Jenga 2001). Informal receptions with bright colours and even a party after the services are becoming the preferred method (Edwards 2002). Orchids instead of roses, favourite songs instead of Bach, touching poems instead of traditional prayers (Wolcott 1999), slay coffins instead of a plain wooden coffin (Eybers 2007) all emphasise the need for personalised funerals. The aim of the first questionnaire was to establish if there is a niche in South Africa for graphic design material for personalised funerals and to assist with the various design implications that can be used in a funeral pamphlet. A second questionnaire was developed in order to include the opinion of a professional in the funeral industry, which could be beneficial in the design process. Through analysing these questionnaires, various design concepts were developed and applied to funeral pamphlets. The funeral industry already provides various services, for example catering, hiring of tents and vehicles. Why not graphic designers? The author of this study postulates that this could possibly develop a trend or need in South Africa, and expose more and more South Africans to personalised funerals.

Remote-controlled-vehicle Control System is a control system applied between the controller and remote-controlled-vehicle. For casual life is prevailing over recent years, old control systems should be replaced. The goal of this study is introducing a set of design methodology to design Remote-controlled-vehicle Control Systems by applying engineering design methods. At the first, we explored in the Remote-controlled-vehicle Control Systems. In order to clarify the design task, ¡§Objectives Tree¡¨ was applied to clarify six design tasks of need, and to establish the charts of seven design specification of Remote-controlled-vehicle Control Systems. In the concept design stage, we used the ¡§Function Analysis Method¡¨ to analysis and synthesis the function structure of the Remote-controlled-vehicle Control Systems, and we created two types of function structure, and found many working solutions of our concept by applying Creative Techniques. In the following embodiment design stage, we used ¡§Morphological Chart Method¡¨ to find 90 working solutions for type I, 90 solutions for type II, and finally evaluated and selected better ones by processing of ¡§Evaluation Chart¡¨ thrice. We evaluated the solutions of type I and type II, thus we got 22 solutions for each type, and in following, we evaluated all ones totally, got nine solutions in the second time, and got seven better and potential concepts of design in the third time, and drew the diagrams of real object. The result of this study can benefit the creative design and development of Remote-controlled-vehicle Control Systems.

Designing innovative computer systems is no longer simply a technical issue. There is now a growing awareness that a grounded understanding of the social and organisational context into which these systems are to be deployed, until recently overlooked, may be critical, particularly in the early phases of design. It is in these stages, known as requirements elicitation, capture or analysis, or more generally Requirements Engineering, that researchers have begun to acknowledge both social and technical concerns in the requirements for systems. This thesis aims to mediate between a detailed appreciation of the social organisation of the workplace and the technical structure of information technology. In order to do this, we explore the relevance of recent developments in the social sciences, principally ethnomethodology and interaction analysis, for providing an alternative analytic orientation for requirements capture. In particular, we outline the principal characteristics of an approach that takes into account the details of the moment-to-moment production of work activities and communicative practices. It is argued that attendance to such interactional features will improve requirements practice, and hence will ultimately lead to more sensitive designs for supporting collaborative work. To illustrate this approach, we take as an example the development of particular technologies for a complex work setting - financial trading rooms. Results of the analysis are then used to discuss requirements for systems to support trading. In particular, we consider how issues emerging from this analysis, developed from an ethnomethodological orientation, could inform requirements analysis. In this regard, we investigate approaches to modelling interactional resources, including the use of formal notations developed for sequential and communicating processes, and provide requirements analysts with sensitivities by which to consider naturalistic settings. This forms the basis for mutually dependent investigations: on the system design side, drawing on the model to allow consideration of conflicts introduced by technological choices; and on the social science side, providing an agenda for renewed investigation into the domain. We conclude by discussing the pre-requisites necessary so that approaches in this thesis could be integrated within the software development process.