Abstract In 2002, Kaohsiung Port has become the fifth largest container world port in world rank, losing to Korea¡¦s Pusan Port the third time and to the Mainland¡¦s Shanghai Port the first. Under the fierce threat of global ports¡¦ competitions, Kaohsiung Port now is also facing the challenges from other new ports along the Mainland¡¦s coastline. Therefore, it might not even keep the fifth in rank if there is no any other managing strategy more effective to confront global ports¡¦ competitions. As a part of the Port, Kaohsiung Customs has the responsibility for helping it on the issues of three links and direct transport, planning free-trade portal zone and fulfilling obligations after entering WTO. Moreover, the Customs can render help to revitalize the Port as vigorous as before. In compliance with the Port¡¦s strategy, the Customs should know: how to use the synergy gained from knowledge management and innovation to simplify the administrative work, how to utilize the newest and most effective enforcement, and how to introduce the newest technology and instrument to reach the demand of Customs modernization¡Xa barrier-free clearance environment¡Xso as to raise the business sectors and the port¡¦s international competitiveness ¡Xall are testing the expertise and wisdom of the Port¡¦s authorities in business strategy. Nominal Group Technique (NGT), applied in a group, an organization, an enterprise, a community or a society, has certain performance of solving unstructured problems which are important, complex, badly communicated with, or controversial. According to general research, using NGT to operate interactive management has the effects such as effective participation of team workers, realizing and identifying an issue, reaching a consensus and conclusion, as well as restructuring recognition from interactive learning. This research proceeded with interviewing local experts, and compiling their opinions those were used not only to verify the research¡¦s assumptions but also to develop a subsequent NGT interactive questionnaire. This questionnaire was to test the interactive NGT participants. With the same questionnaire they were tested twice¡Xbefore and after the interaction. Thus, we can examine the degree of interactive learning satisfaction to verify the achievement of NGT interaction. Therefore, the NGT effects can both be the proof of the theoretical basis and the research discovering, which leads to a conclusion and research suggestions. The concrete achievements of NGT interaction include the big ten preferential strategies and an enhanced structural drawing. The structural drawing is a tangible achievement of the research operated by NGT. Moreover, the research collected and analyzed information through the editorials of domestic major newspapers in order to testify the intensity of which the big ten strategies and the structural drawing were converged on the strategy of ¡§three links and direct transport¡¨. The conclusion points out that it will help Kaohsiung Port strive for becoming a hub of global logistical centers. The complexity of the Customs affairs has certain influence over the development of a port¡¦s competition. Nowadays, the issue of the Customs modernization has become a new trend for every country in the world since the US Congress passed the Customs Modernization Act in 1993. How are the results of the two Customs modernization across the strait? This research collected relevant information to analyze and to compare. In conclusion, we found that the achievement of NGT interaction can be verified by general research. Besides, either by expert-interviewing method or by inviting relevant participants to involve the NGT interaction, the final conclusions have the following suggestions those are utilizing knowledge management and innovation to improve the Customs clearance operations, integrating the information between the harbor & Customs, applying risk management to reduce the Customs interference, launching the direct sea transport, decreasing the operation cost of port, legislating as soon as possible for establishing free-trade portal zone¡Ketc. All above will have the most enforceable effects on the competition and development of Kaohsiung Port. The strategy of ¡§Cross-strait three links and direct transport¡¨ will have the most effect on Kaohsiung Port that becomes the hub of global logistic centers.

Involving customers in the creation and design process of new products and services has been dis-cussed in practice and research since the early 1980’s. As one of the first researchers, von Hippel (1986) shed light on the concept of Lead Users, a group of users who are able to provide most accu-rate data on future needs for organizations. Subsequently, many scholars emphasized different areas of contribution for customers and how they provide assistance to the process of innovation. First of all, customers may contribute to product innovation (Cooper & Kleinschmidt, 1987; Driessen & Hillebrand, 2013; Füller & Matzler, 2007; Gruner & Homburg, 2000; Sawhney, Verona, & Prandelli, 2005; Snow, Fjeldstad, Lettl, & Miles, 2011; Yang & Rui, 2009) and service innovation (Abecassis-Moedas, Ben Mahmoud-Jouini, Dell’Era, Manceau, & Verganti, 2012; Alam, 2002; Chesbrough, 2011; Larbig-Wüst, 2010; Magnusson, 2003; Paton & Mclaughlin, 2008; Shang, Lin, & Wu, 2009; Silpakit & Fisk, 1985), e.g., by co-creating values (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004), such as concepts or designs as well as reviewing and testing them throughout the stages of the process of innovation. From the customers’ point of view, being involved in innovation processes and becoming a part of the organ-ization is a desire of an increasing number of them. Customers are demanding more individual and more tailored products. They are increasingly knowledgeable and capable of designing and produc-ing their own products and services. Due to the fact that their influence on product development is positively related to the quality of the new product (Sethi, 2000), more and more organizations appreciate them as innovation actors and are willing to pay them for their input. Today, customers are not only involved in the qualification of products (Callon, Méadel, & Rabeharisoa, 2002; Callon & Muniesa, 2005; Grabher, Ibert, & Flohr, 2009) but also allowed to customize and evaluate them on the path to innovation (Franke & Piller, 2004; Piller & Walcher, 2006; von Hippel & Katz, 2002; von Hippel, 2001). Moreover, there is an abundance of studies that stress the customers’ influence on effectiveness (de Luca & Atuahene-Gima, 2007; Kleinschmidt & Cooper, 1991; Kristensson, Matthing, & Johansson, 2008; Still, Huhtamäki, Isomursu, Lahti, & Koskela-Huotari, 2012) and risk (Bayer & Maier, 2006; Enkel, Kausch, & Gassmann, 2005; Enkel, Perez-Freije, & Gassmann, 2005). While the latter comprises the risk of customer integration as well as the customers’ influence on market risks, e.g., during new product development, studies on effectiveness are mostly concerned with customer-orientation and products/services in line with customers’ expectations (Atuahene-Gima, 1996, 2003; Fuchs & Schreier, 2011). The accompanying change in understanding became known as open innovation (OI; first coined by Chesbrough in 2003) and represents a paradigm shift, where organizations switch their focus from internally generated innovation (i.e., ideation, in-house R&D, etc.) toward external knowledge and open innovation processes, thus, allowing them to integrate external ideas and actors, i.e. custom-ers (Chesbrough, 2006) and other external stakeholders (Laursen & Salter, 2006). Since then, OI has been identified as a success factor for increasing customer satisfaction (Füller, Hutter, & Faullant, 2011; Greer & Lei, 2012) and growing revenues (Faems, De Visser, Andries, & van Looy, 2010; Mette, Moser, & Fridgen, 2013; Spithoven, Frantzen, & Clarysse, 2010). In addition to that, by open-ing their doors to external experts and knowledge workers (Kang & Kang, 2009), organizations cope with shorter innovation cycles, rising R&D costs, and the shortage of resources (Gassmann & Enkel, 2004). Parallel to the paradigm shift in innovation, another shift has taken place in information and com-munication technologies (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011). Only a few years ago, when customer integration was still very costly, companies had to fly in customers, provide facilities onsite, permanently assign employees to such activities, and incentivise each task execut-ed by customers. Today, emerging technologies (subsumed under the term ‘social software’) help integrating customers or other external stakeholders, who are increasingly familiar with the such technologies from personal usage experience (Cook, 2008), and grant them access from all over the world in a 24/7 fashion. Examples include blogging tools, social networking systems, or wikis. These technologies help organizations to access customer knowledge, facilitate the collaboration with customers (Culnan, McHugh, & Zubillaga, 2010; Piller & Vossen, 2012) at reduced costs and allow them to address a much larger audience (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). On the other hand, customers can now express their needs in a more direct way to organizations. However, each technology or application category may present a completely different benefit to the process of innovation or parts of it and, thus, the innovation itself. Reflecting these developments, organizations need to know two things: how can they exploit the customers’ knowledge for innovation purposes and how may the implementation of social soft-ware support this. Hence, this research addresses the integration of customers in organizational innovation, i.e. new product development. It addresses how and why firms activate customers for innovation and which contribution customers provide to the process of innovation. Additionally, it investigates which tasks customers may take over in open innovations projects and which strategies organiza-tions may choose to do so. It also addresses which social software application supports each task best and how organizations may select the most suitable application out of a rapidly growing num-ber of alternatives. The nature of this research is recommendatory and aims at designing a solution for organizations that are interested in the potential contribution of customers during innovation, already involve customers in innovation tasks or plan to do so. Following the recommendations of this research should result in a more effective organizational exploitation of customer knowledge and their workforce and, thus, a value added to innovation and the outcomes of the process of innovation, e.g., a product that better fits the customers’ expectations and demands or consequently a better adoption of the product by the customer.:1 Introduction 2 Theoretical foundation 3 Research areas and focal points 4 Research aims and questions 5 Methods 6 Findings 7 Conclusion References Essay 1: The Role of External Knowledge in Open Innovation – A Systematic Review of Literature Essay 2: External Knowledge in Organisational Innovation – Toward an Integration Concept Essay 3: Idea Mining – Text Mining Supported Knowledge Management for Innovation Purposes Essay 4: How do Tasks and Technology fit? – Bringing Order to the Open Innovation Chaos

Malaysia is a transition economic country that aims to be a developed country by 2020. In realising this mission (Vision 2020), the cluster concept has been an interest and adopted by the central authorities. There are few years ahead to reach the targeted year and it interest of this study to investigate the relevant development on its own engineered cluster of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) that was put forward on the success of Silicon Valley in the US. This thesis focuses on the development of the MSC cluster in the Malaysia context. It examines and measures the state of the cluster, the role played by its core actors (from Triple Helix perspective) and their relationship in the MSC. The role of collaboration has been used to measure the relationship among actors with the key determinants of cluster formation. A mixed data collection method was used to answer the research question and objectives involved. A conceptual model for analysing the MSC cluster is proposed, bringing together insights from the literature on clusters, role of actors, collaborative relationship and the complex systems of innovation approach. This conceptual model uncover the weaknesses of social dimension (social infrastructure) in Porter’s diamond model and the general approach of Triple Helix model in the cluster development. The cluster lifecycle model is used to add the depth to the analysis on the condition of cluster development.