Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 289-312).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--George Washington University, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 199-208).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, Toronto, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 399-439).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Kent State University, 2005. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed July 25, 2006). Advisors: William L. Shanklin, Marvin Troutt. Keywords: disruptive technologies, radical technological change, incremental technological change, case study methodology, strategic response. Includes bibliographical references (p. 144-149).

Thesis (MTech (Construction Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2015. / Urbanisation and globalisation are the foremost trends propelling the growth and development of cities and towns in the world today. The Cape Town central business district is an example of an urban centre that is required to deal with rapid urbanisation. The increasing number of inner-city developments evoked the congested construction sites and are rapidly becoming the norm within the industry. Innovative building production management is crucial in driving productivity which includes reducing cost at all stages, from planning to completion. However, from several literatures, construction firms are not significantly proactive towards innovative technology that could enhance the efficient delivery of building production. The improved building production management is advancing at a slow pace both in South Africa and internationally. Hence, this research analyse the strategies that could significantly enhance current building production processes and establish the effective management systems that could enhance efficient building production in the urban centres. Innovative methods of stimulating building production processes are needed to ensure that building projects are completed within timeframes and budgets. The research method is both quantitative and qualitative using surveys for data collection. This type of research aims to record an accurate and adequate description of the problem statement and the sub-question. Data for the study are collected through observations, semi-structured and unstructured qualitative interviews and quantitative close-ended questionnaires administered to construction stakeholders working in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. This research focuses on the City of Cape Town to gain an understanding of the dynamics of innovation in building production processes within the building industry. The population of this research include building project managers, registered contractors as well as consultants. Quantitative data obtained from the structured questionnaire design was analysed with descriptive statistics, Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software 21 and content analysis are used to analyse the qualitative data obtained through interviewees.

This research focused on collaborative ties in innovating teams in a research and development (R&D) environment of a technologically innovative R&D intensive manufacturing company. The purpose of the study was to determine the relative impact of, respectively, the strength of ties and the breadth of ties on the innovativeness of teams. Significant research has been carried out on strong and weak ties, and on ties related to social networks. The diversity of networks and their corresponding impact on innovation has also received attention. There has however been little focus in the academic literature on the simultaneous functioning of the strength of ties and breadth of ties and their impact on team innovation in the same study. This research has employed an innovative approach to data collection and a fairly novel and recent methodology for the modeling of the simultaneous configurations of the strength and breadth of ties in enriching the understanding of their contribution to team innovation. The innovativeness of work teams was determined through a team innovation survey administered to the heads of the groups in R&D and independent evaluators knowledgeable about the innovation activities of the teams rated E-mail reports on engagement between teams were used to develop measures for both tie strength and tie breadth. Tie strength for an individual was determined by counting the number of repeated interactions firstly with one's own team, secondly with the rest of teams in own R&D, thirdly with the rest of teams in the organization and finally with teams outside the organization. Tie breadth was determined from a count of the number of different people with whom communication took place for each individual. The same categories for tie breadth were created as for the tie strength for interactions above. Hypothesised relationships were tested through fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. The results showed that team innovation is mainly supported by tie strength within the organization. In terms of the simultaneous functioning of tie strength and tie breadth, the strongest results were obtained for the combinations of tie strength with the rest of own R&D and the organization, and tie breadth with the rest of own R&D and the organization. These interactions supported the hypothesis that a combination of strong ties and multiple ties provided the most conducive environment for optimal team innovation. These findings taken together supported the broad view that in mature industries dependent on highly technological processes, interaction within teams and within the firm would predominate, because a shared understanding of a specific strategy and technology base was required. In such a context, cross-divisional interaction also had utility for innovation, as was confirmed by the statistical analysis. It was the combination of many strong ties that produced optimal team innovation. Total external interactions (tie breadth) showed a weaker impact alone. In summary, this has shown that tie strength has a greater impact on innovation than tie breadth. These findings were derived from an R&D intensive mature industrial manufacturing context and variations in utility are likely to be context-dependent. However, should the company diversify its products or adopt newer technologies even in its mature state, then more external interaction has the potential to add value to the innovation process, as the literature suggests. Thus the study suggests indicated that internal collaboration is a key factor impacting positively on the innovativeness of teams. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / pagibs2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / PhD / Unrestricted

This paper reviews the literature on innovation in order to build an agenda for an investigation into the extent to which Metropolitan Retail, within Metropolitan Life Pty in South Africa, focuses on technology innovation capabilities and perspectives. The research was conducted in the areas of, technology innovation capabilities, perspectives guiding the business strategy to integrate and accelerate innovation and contextual aspects influencing innovation perspectives. The extent of focus by the firm on capabilities and perspectives was measured. Data gathered was disseminated and processed by means of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. The results on current focus indicate that the firm’s focus is mostly on improving core business, although the extent is less than adequate. In other words, generate incremental innovations that can be developed and implemented rapidly and inexpensively. This approach of implementing innovation is in line with the business strategy, more specifically, with the objective of reducing costs and making profits. The findings of the research further suggest that the firm should consider focusing mostly on exploiting strategic advantages. In many firms the fundamental emphasis on technology innovation in developing products, processes and services is thought to determine their ability to cope with never ending customer demands and competitive practices. Coupled with this thought is a reality of high failure rate of technology innovation projects. Against this backdrop, general managers are faced with strategic innovation options, which can make or break firms. Changes in the economic and government environments influence the innovation approach of the firm most. These changes have undoubtedly presented firms with opportunities as well as risks. Possibly the greatest challenge confronting general managers in this context is the building of critical capabilities to enhance the firm’s agility. This challenge presents opportunity for further research.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, Uni- versity of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fullfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering. Johannesburg, May 2018 / With the expected disruption of industry 4.0 and the current challenges that SMEs face in South Africa, there is an increasing threat that SMEs will lose any competitive advantage they currently have. This exploratory study investigates how South African manufacturing SMEs can remain competitive during the fourth industrial revolution. Data, in the form of current literature, was analysed using thematic content analysis. From the analysis process, 8 emergent themes were used to organise the results of the study. Notable findings towards generating competitive advantage included: The location of SMEs within clusters, collaboration with disruption leaders, the sharing of outcomes across the value chain, the shift of business models towards a service and software orientation, the use of data driven insights to find and capture high margin markets and the increased effectiveness of labour through technology use. The study also found that the use of the IoT and cloud computing can significantly reduce infrastructure requirements and promote a competitive advantage. / MT 2018

The theoretical basis for using electron mirrors as correctors of chromatic aberration is presented and an experimental verification of correction of chromatic aberration is demonstrated. A hyperbolic electrostatic electron mirror operating in its converging range and at unity magnification was used as a corrector. A novel separating system with deflections taking place at image planes was developed to implement the mirror without impairing the resolution. Correction was demonstrated in an electron optical probe system. The chromatic aberration was measured by means of the shadows cast by a fine mesh placed near the final image. The experimental method and equipment are described. The experiment serves as a verification of the theory as well as a successful test of the method of separating the electron beams traveling to and from the mirror.

The meteoric rise and prevalent usage of wireless networking technologies for mobile communication applications have captured the attention of media and imagination of public in the recent decade. One such proliferation is experienced in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), where multimedia enabled elements are fused with integrated sensors to empower tightly coupled interaction with the physical world. As a promising alternative to antiquated wired systems and traditional WSNs in a multitude of novel application scenarios, the newly renovated WSNs have inspired a wide range of research among which investigation on data acquisition techniques is a fundamental one. In this dissertation, we address the problem of data acquisition in next generation WSNs. As wireless sensors are powered with limited energy resources while they are expected to work in an unattended manner for a long duration, energy conservation stands as the primal concern. Also, to enable in-situ sensing in different rate-constrained applications, routing decisions should care about the medium access feasibility of achievable end-to-end data rates. Driven by the fact, we first design cross-layer medium contention aware routing schemes for rate-constrained traffic in single-channel WSNs that maximize network lifetime. Three sufficient conditions on rate feasibility, referred to as rate-based, degree-based, and mixed constraints, are incorporated into the routing formulations to guarantee the practical viability of the routing solutions. Next, with the aim to mitigate interference and hence to enhance network capacity, we extend our work by proposing energy and cross-layer aware routing schemes for multichannel access WSNs that account for radio, MAC contention, and network constraints. In that context, we first derive three new sets of sufficient conditions that ensure feasibility of data rates in multichannel access WSNs. Then, utilizing these sets, we devise three different MAC-aware routing optimization schemes, each aiming to maximize the network lifetime while meeting data rate requirements of end-to-end flows. Finally, we perform extensive simulation studies to evaluate and compare the performance of the proposed routing approaches under various network conditions. So far works are done in milieu of WSNs with both fixed access node and sensor nodes. In the subsequent part of the dissertation, we present the continuation of our work focusing on reliable data acquisition in Mobile WSNs for a promising application namely free-ranging animal tracking/monitoring. To accomplish that goal, we concentrate on providing sufficient conditions on access-point density that limit the likelihood of buffer overflow. We first derive sufficient access-point density conditions that ensure that the data loss rates are statistically guaranteed to remain below a given threshold. Then, we evaluate and validate the derived theoretical results with both synthetic and real-world data. / Graduation date: 2012