The Internet has successfully served the world for more than three decades, while limitations and drawbacks still exist. A lot of researches have been done on innovation of Internet to address those inadequacies. One approach to improve Internet performance is to make choice as a principle in network architecture. We believe that a service-based network architecture with choice, or we call it ChoiceNet, is the most suitable option for future Internet. In this thesis, we design and implement a network service marketplace. Due to the flexibility and functionality of web application, the marketplace is implemented by a web application to fulfill functions such as storing and searching network services, handling actual financial transaction and interacting with client and service planner.

It is commonly accepted nowadays that innovations are brought forward in an interactive process of knowledge generation and application. The business sector, the science sector, and policy actors are involved in this process as has been stressed in concepts such as innovation systems and the network approach. It is still unclear, however, as to what extent different kinds of innovation rely on specific knowledge sources and links. More advanced innovations on the one hand might draw more on scientific knowledge, generated in universities and research organizations. Such knowledge is often exchanged in personal interactions at a local or regional level. Incremental innovations and the adoption of new technologies, on the other hand, seem to occur often in interaction with partners from the business sector also at higher spatial levels. In this paper we analyze such patterns of knowledge links. After dealing with knowledge interactions from a conceptual view and reviewing the relevant literature, we present an empirical analysis for Austria. The findings show that firms introducing more advanced innovations are relying to a higher extent on R&D and patents, and that they are cooperating more often with universities and research organizations. Firms having introduced less advanced innovations rely more on knowledge links with business services. Furthermore, the employment of researchers was identified as a key factor enhancing knowledge interactions of firms with universities. (authors' abstract) / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

Questo lavoro consiste in una collezione di 8 paper accettati da altrettante Conference internazionali di diverso indirizzo disciplinare, dal marketing B2B all'organizzazione aziendale ai sistemi informativi. In questi paper, si affronta da diversi punti di vista il tema dei business network e di come il business networking influenzi la capacità di innovazione delle imprese. Le ricerche presentate confermano su più fronti come le classiche variabili con cui si misurano i business network, quali la fiducia, la conoscenza reciproca, l'intensità dei flussi di risorse scambiate, eccetera, per quanto importanti, non siano sufficienti a spiegare l'influenza che il network ha sulle capacità di innovazione. Vengono quindi proposti 3 nuovi costrutti: Motivazioni al business network, Attitudine alle relazioni di business di lungo periodo, e Sostenibilità della collaborazione altruistica. Il lavoro ipotizza come diverse configurazioni di queste tre variabili possono influenzare le capacità di innovazione dell'organizzazione. Alcune ricerche qualitative, focalizzate sul settore turistico (sistema destinazione) e sul manifatturiero (supply chain) permettono di mettere a confronto il modello con contesti di business concreti. / The system of the organization's long-term business relationships is the organization's Business Network. This theory-building thesis focuses on how business networking influences the organization's performances, and more specifically its innovation capabilities. An important gap in theory is identified, since there is a lack of consistent research explaining why even Business Networks where all the traditional variables (such as Trust, Cooperation, Number of Ties, Strength of Ties, etc.) are ranking high, may perform poorly in terms of innovation capabilities. An inter-disciplinary effort may be a fruitful strategy for addressing such a gap in theory. Consistently, this thesis was structured as a collection of 8 papers submitted to and accepted by different international Conferences, whose disciplinary focus spanned from B2B marketing to organization studies, Information Systems, Operations research and eParticipation studies. These papers include qualitative researches for theory-building, and the considered cases belong to different industrial sectors such as Tourism and Manufacturing. The main novel outcomes of this work are: the identification of new Constructs (and related Scales) describing phenomena that influence, according to the qualitative researches conducted here, the innovation capabilities of Business Networks; and the in-depth analysis of how successful and sustainable innovation emerges from creative processes in collaborative settings. The identifed Constructs are: Motivations to Business Network, Attitude to Long-Term Business Relationships, Sustainability of Altruistic Cooperation. This work hypothesizes that if the main Motivation to Networking is the predictability of business interactions, this may result in a detrimental effect on Creativity/Innovation, and in a weakened resilience of the Altruistic Cooperation. On the other hand, if the main Motivation to Networking is to aggregate power, for example for lobbying activities, this tends to enhance only certain aspects of Altruistic Cooperation, whilst Creativity/Innovation at the network level is likely to be poorer. Finally, if the main Motivation to Networking is to aggregate capabilities, both Altruistic Cooperation and Creativity/Innovation are often positively impacted, especially when also certain levels of Predictability and of Power Aggregation are achieved.

Univ., Diss.--Osnabrück, 2005.

Open Innovation bezeichnet Innovationsprozesse, die nicht an den Grenzen von Unternehmen oder deren Innovationsabteilungen enden, sondern Akteure unabhängig von deren institutioneller Zugehörigkeit als Ideengeber, Konzeptentwickler oder auch Innovationsumsetzer in die Gestaltung von Innovationen einbinden. Dieser Beitrag skizziert Grundlagen der Open Innovation, stellt die einzubindenden Akteure und ihre Rollen im Innovationsgeschehen vor und führt ein in die fünf zentralen Werkzeugklassen, auf die Unternehmen zur Implementierung von Open Innovation heute zurückgreifen können. Herausforderungen und Spannungsfelder, die sich bei der Nutzung von Open Innovation zeigen, werden abschließend aufgezeigt.