Past research in the area of product innovativeness has been dominated by studies conducted at the firm level. Furthermore, these studies principally lack a consumer perspective on the product innovativeness - product performance relationship. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore three seemingly critical questions regarding the impact of product innovativeness dimensions on the evaluation of innovative products at the individual level: (i) how do consumers evaluate and respond to different types of product innovativeness? (ii) do these evaluations change over time?, and (iii) under what conditions is change most likely to occur? Specifically, new visual design features (i.e., form innovativeness) and new non-visual features (i.e., function innovativeness) are empirically tested to understand how they interact and relate to new product evaluations. Within this research, attitudes and behavioral intentions toward products with innovative features are measured over time to assess how and when they might change. Two experiments were conducted to empirically test the impact of form innovativeness on functionally innovative products over time. Participants in both experiments received multiple exposures to innovative products, rating their attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the products after each exposure. Participants in the first experiment saw a visual representation of the products only once while those in the second experiment saw the products during each exposure. Results from two experiments suggest that form innovativeness does indeed have a changing impact on the liking of innovative products. Furthermore, this change is moderated by the product's visual presence or absence. Finally, this change occurs when innovativeness in form is applied to either a form product or to a function product.

Innovation is a necessary part of construction business operations as a means to remain competitive in a dynamic environment, and yet, as a whole the construction industry continues to be labeled as laggard. Innovation and the processes surrounding innovation involve layers of complexity and are therefore often misunderstood. In order for industry stakeholders to better derive benefits from the innovation process, they must first understand the drivers of innovation within their own organizations, including relationships to other organizations and actions of contributing individuals. Utilizing a flexible design methodology of literature review, a modified Delphi technique and a survey instrument, this work aims to develop and present an initial validation of a framework of individual and organizational change by which such characteristics of innovativeness can be categorized. As a basis of this work, categories of innovativeness are those defined by Rogers (2003), and then expanded by parameters of innovativeness extracted from scholarly literature. The overarching goal of this research endeavor is to better understand the behavior of individual and organizational change through specific categories of innovativeness that can be used to build a tangible set of tools for use in the construction industry. However, ultimate validation and translation will be the effort of future work. In gaining innovativeness knowledge, industry stakeholders will understand their own strengths and weaknesses, better arming them with the tools to initiate and succeed at organizational change. / Master of Science

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Under driving in the digital trend, the 3C product becomes an important strength that pushes the market growth and isn¡¦t allowed to ignore. Along with the information circulates quickly, the favor of the consumer continuously changes. The manufacturer makes use of progress the science and technology technique to integrates enrich and the more high-quality content into more diverse device. However cell phone becomes the main consume communication electronics product currently, under the convenient need of the consumer, as Dan Steinbock (2006) speaks of in the book "The Mobile Revolution: The Making of mobile services worldwide"¡GThe mobile communication is experiencing the huge change period of the voice into the data. Global mobile market and service development just turns in and will become the next star level of mobile communication product. Today the flourishing times of science and information technology progresses, in order to maintain the competitive advantage, the enterprise continuously pursues the innovation and growth. However the cellular phone product life cycle tends in the maturity and the market is gradually saturated, the manufacturer stimulates the need of the consumer by promoting the innovation of the product. This research is inquiring the influence between the innovation of the product and personal creative characteristics into the intention of buying high-tech product for the consumer, expecting to provide enterprise on the development and marketing the decision reference. As case example with high creative-iPhone that Apple Inc. will soon appear on market. To adopt the convenience sampling questionnaire from April 2nd till 30th and collect valid 240 samples to carry on the data analysis. The result finds the innovation of product and the consumer innovative characteristic present the obvious influence of the purchase willing, and the product innovation through the consumer innovation would indirect affect the purchase willing. The creative sensitive degree for young generation is higher, particularly valuing to the function of the product in the need of the occupation, obviously, the innovation is also widespread to be subjected to the general public accept now. The successful innovation originates new science and technology and new market field appear, enterprise continuously applies innovation, but the most important is providing the product of customer need, and establishes the brand image, then raises the customer loyalty to reach the life simply is a beautiful realm.

viii, 70 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / The relationship between principal's scored levels of innovativeness and shared leadership behaviors was studied using an embedded case study methodology. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between a scale of principal innovativeness and reported shared leadership behaviors. Using a research-based self-report questionnaire, the principals reported their perceived innovativeness preferences. Semi-structured interviews with the principals and literacy coaches gave insight into shared leadership behaviors. Principals reported similar levels of innovativeness, though shared leadership behaviors varied between participants. Variances were relative to the extent that each principal shared decision-making power with informal leaders within their respective buildings. / Adviser: Diane Dunlap

Abstract The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute both theoretically and empirically to the literature of regional economics. We aim to provide theoretical insights and explanations as well as interesting empirical findings which are relevant for the analyses of the regional development. Chapter two reviews the literature on new growth theory, economic geography, geography of innovation and innovation process. We illustrate connections between these strands of literature from the perspective of technological development and its diffusion. We discuss the role of innovation activity, technological development, and especially knowledge spillovers in economic growth, and clarify their microeconomic linkages to endogenous macroeconomic growth. In chapter three we shed additional light on the role of intra-regional economies of scale and inter-regional externalities in regional economic growth. Chapter provides interesting theoretical insights and explanations for the analysis of regional development. In chapters four to seven we analyse how the establishments' individual characteristics and their R&D cooperation with other firms and organizations as well as sectoral and geographical origins of their labour acquisitions affects the innovation performance of the establishments. We try to isolate the independent role on innovation performance played by knowledge transfers associated with localised human-capital mobility from those associated with inter-firm and inter-organisational tacit knowledge spillovers. No previous studies, as far as we are aware, have been able to empirically identify and distinguish in such a detailed and comprehensive manner as in this dissertation the effects of these two, qualitatively quite different types of knowledge transfer mechanisms on innovation.

Research focusing on service innovation has seen a significant growth in the last two decades, yet the research on KIBS innovation - and especially on innovation in the creative industries, like advertising - remains rather limited. Due to the increasingly competitive business environment, how KIBS firms co-create with their clients to develop more innovative products or services is becoming more important. Therefore, this research uses the UK advertising industry as a basis to explore the nature of advertising innovation, the service innovation process and the co-creation within it, and how KIBS project innovativeness influences new service development. The literature on service innovation, co-creation and innovativeness involved in developing services or products provides the theoretical foundation for this research. It uses multiple case studies methodology and is based on 45 interviews with advertising managers. The findings of this thesis can be divided into three key areas. First, this study conceptualises the advertising innovation and advertising innovation dimensions and identifies the importance of content innovation and two-sided interface in advertising innovation. Second, the innovation process in the advertising industry can be divided into five phases: the problem diagnosis phase, the creative process, the production phase, the commercialisation phase, and the evaluation and learning phase. (In more detail, the innovation process can be divided into fourteen development stages: client brief, understanding client business, problem diagnosis, strategy planning, creative briefing, idea generation, idea testing, idea selection, idea amplification, production, testing, launch, evaluation, and learning.) This research examines what is meant by co-creation, and identifies how co-creation changes over the course of the service innovation process - where co-creation activities and tasks, and the roles of service firms and their clients, vary across stages of service production. It finds that co-creation between advertising companies and their clients follows a 'W-shaped' curve pattern, with the most intense co-creation in the problem diagnosis phase and the least in the production phase. (The practitioners in these KIBS assert that having too much co-creation activities in the idea generation stage tends to develop uncreative ideas.) Third, as the tasks of KIBS are to fuse generic knowledge with local and special knowledge related to specific problems, to develop problem solutions for their clients, this study conceptualises KIBS project innovativeness as involving two parameters: (1) the knowledge and experience of the problem itself (which relates to problem novelty); (2) the knowledge and experience of developing innovative solutions (solution innovativeness), and explores how KIBS project innovativeness influences new service development. Based on the analysis of KIBS project innovativeness, this study develops a typology of project development in KIBS firms, which includes four types of projects: routine project, new project, solution-led project, and innovative project. This research contributes to understanding the nature of service innovation and co-creation by providing a more thorough understanding of the role of co-creation in the overall new service development process. It also shapes our understanding of KIBS project innovativeness and how it influences new service development.

Nowadays, many firms are or have already been engaged in an acquisition process, either as target or acquirer. While these companies seem confident in the potential returns of such endeavors, the positive aspect of those acquisitions has yet to be proven. There is indeed a vivid discussion among scholars, which are divided into two categories. On the one hand, there are those considering acquisitions as a source of additional knowledge that will in turn increase the innovation within the company; and on the other hand, those denigrating acquisitions, assimilating them to a “poison pill” for innovation. The purpose of this research is therefore to investigate whether the acquisitions will influence positively or negatively the innovative performance of companies involved in such processes. Using a quantitative approach, this research analyzed the R&D investments made by those companies and the issued patents gained in return. The research provides mixed results. While acquisitions seem to have a positive impact on the companies‟ innovative performance during the two years following the acquisition, this positive impact does not last and even becomes negative during the third year.

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This study presents a conceptual model to investigate the electronic health (E-Health) capability required by healthcare professionals. First, a scale to measure E-Health capability was developed and validated, then it was used to collect the survey data. Second, the partial least squares (PLS) method was used to empirically test the conceptual model and hypotheses through the survey data collected. The empirical results support the proposed structure for E-Health capability encompassing the three skills/knowledge domains: IT governance capability, practice management capability, and business model innovativeness. The findings improve our understanding of the concept of E-Health capability. The conceptual model of E-Health capability is of particular value to those concerned with skills/knowledge training and competency development for healthcare professionals in healthcare organizations. Healthcare organizations can develop E-Health capability profiles for individual healthcare professionals in accordance with their own organization contexts.