Sharif Digital Repository

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present and evaluate the performance of innovation systems by considering two indicators of efficiency and effectiveness. The scope of the evaluation is globally and due to the situation of each country, the suggested strategies are proposed to maintain the status quo or move toward the desired situation for countries. Design/methodology/approach: The approach is to compare and benchmark the countries in terms of the efficiency and effectiveness of their innovation system. The Global Innovation Index report’s input-to-output ratio and the global competitiveness report are used for the assessment. Findings: The findings indicate that countries such as... 

Energy innovation is essential for tackling climate change. However, an established set of indicators, that can support policy makers in their design of policy mixes, has not been developed for evaluating the performance of energy innovation systems. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to list and classify a large set of indicators of the performance of energy innovation systems at sectoral and technological levels. 120 listed indicators are evaluated using four usefulness criteria, demonstrating significant weaknesses in the available indicators. The indicators are also classified according to an innovation process categorization to see if they cover all aspects of an innovation system... 

Purpose: Different studies have analyzed the relationship between organizational learning (OL) and innovation performance (IP). However, the question of how innovation culture (IC) affects the relationship between OL and IP remains unexplored. This study aims to examine the impact of IC on the relationship between OL and various dimensions of IP, including product, process and objective innovation. Design/methodology/approach: A research model was developed and performed based on the relevant literature in the field of OL, IC and IP. The hypotheses are tested with the data collected from companies operating in an intensive knowledge-based industry. Findings: Based on the results of 625... 

One of the new forming world discipline feature is knowledge based innovation. World new discipline, vitality condition is to establish new science and technology and suitable utility from that. Therefore, the new era witness those grand variations in university systems and for more utilization process in national, regional and international economical development. In this context, traditional university variation and conversion to Entrepreneurial University and holding and creating idea and supporting it to transform in final product or service is concerned, which means knowledge-based entrepreneurship. Thus, this university can develop knowledge-based staff and has nontraditional processes... 

Traditional regulatory models of natural monopoly network utilities are designed to incentivise cost-efficiency, subject to the firm achieving a certain level of reliability. With the rise of decarbonisation as a key policy goal, facilitating innovation in electricity networks has become of vital importance. Innovation and cost-efficiency may overlap and exhibit the same risk profile. However, we show that when there is a difference in their risk profile, incentivising these two tasks using the same incentive scheme is ineffective. This means incentive regulations need to be enhanced with additional modules that take into account the level of risk to which companies are exposed to for their... 

The ways in which an innovation (e.g., new behaviour, idea, technology, product) diffuses among people can determine its success or failure. In this paper, we address the problem of diffusion of innovations over multiplex social networks where the neighbours of a person belong to one or multiple networks (or layers) such as friends, families, or colleagues. To this end, we generalise one of the basic game-theoretic diffusion models, called networked coordination game, for multiplex networks. We present analytical results for this extended model and validate them through a simulation study, finding among other properties a lower bound for the success of an innovation. While simple and leading... 

The debate over innovativeness of large firms and SMEs, which was bolded by Schumpeter, still continues under mixed empirical evidences. There are several implications for this debate including policy orientation in support of large firms or SMEs. But there is a scarce of studies in developing countries and no such study in Iran yet. The present study has explored the proportionality of increase of innovation activity versus firm size within 522 Iranian knowledge-based firms categorized in 9 industries. Innovation activity was measured by R&D expenditure while firm size stood for number of employees. Using log–log regression in the first phase, it was found that R&D expenditure confirms a... 

The capital intensive network industries such as electricity and gas delivery infrastructures exhibit natural monopoly characteristics because of their high economy of scale relative to the size of the market. Due to the absence of direct competition in these regulated industries, infrastructure providers hardly undertake the appropriate level of innovation activities to optimise the operation and continuity of their services; a review is provided to show how different countries support innovation in the network industries. As innovation activities are costly and risky undertakings, a relevant query is how to incentivise innovation through economic regulations. This paper models three... 

Motivation: Why, despite substantial investment in science and technology infrastructure during the last two decades, has Iran performed relatively poorly in terms of innovation and economic output? The investment has been wide-ranging, from the inclusion of science and technology in the National Development Plans to the impressive growth in the number of science and technology parks and incubators. Iran is among the top five countries in terms of science and engineering graduates, and Iran's scientific publications are among the world's fastest-growing. Purpose: This study attempts to discover the reasons for this poor performance despite the investment. Approach and Method: This is a... 

The evolution of innovation system literature is scrutinized to delineate the conceptual trends over the past 30 years. We applied the Sigma index which is supposed to include not only the frontier contributions in the field but also the intellectual bases conveying transformative concepts. Our examination shows that after the establishment of the National Innovation System (NIS)as a principal framework, Regional IS literature emerged as a main branch during the period of 2002–2007, while Technological IS developed as the second main branch from 2007 to 2012. Surprisingly, Sectoral IS has not yet generated a separate constellation, whereas the period after 2012 mainly witnessed the emergence... 

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) encourage the use of various Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) strategies, which can help reduce onsite construction time, minimize traffic and environmental impacts, improve work zone safety, and deliver longer lasting and more durable bridges. ABC approaches include the application of technical innovations and management techniques. The decision to use ABC must be made on a project-by-project basis as each bridge location is unique, and factors constraining each project are different. Toward this end, FHWA developed a qualitative decision making framework called... 

There are a lot of parameters which are decisive in distribution loss management, such as demand value, energy price, etc. In this paper the cause-and-effect relationships among some of these variables are clearly described. The study demonstrates how a variable in the model will change, if an alteration in one of the other variables occurs. The power system variables considered in this study include energy and loss prices, generation and demand values, distribution loss, distribution system age, number of customers connected to the smart grid, distribution network revenue, and so forth. The smart grid impacts can be studied from two different aspects: 1) the communication infrastructure... 

Using network analysis, we investigate if an industry's complex and integrated knowledge base leads to a higher spatial concentration (or dispersal)of innovative activities. This is important because the extant literature provides competing claims about how knowledge base complexity impacts on the spatial distribution of industrial innovation. To help empirically resolve this issue, we draw on longitudinal data (1970–2010)on the upstream petroleum industry and build indexes of entropy and complexity to render knowledge base dynamics, assess the spatial concentration of innovation, and study industry structural transformations. We first find a correlation – once a crucial distinction between...