Digital Commons Network^™

Framing Complex Challenges, Joseph V. Sinfield, Romika R. Kotian

Innovation Insight Series

Innovating to achieve impact at scale in ill-structured environments is a complex challenge, with numerous socio-techno-economic dimensions. Whether tailoring a product or service offering to meet the needs of a global customer base, forecasting the socio-economic implications of a new technology, or working to address a societal challenge in a low-to-middle income country, problems that encompass social, technical and/or economic uncertainty, significant variations in involved stakeholder characteristics, and even subtle differences across the focal environment, inevitably benefit from a holistic analysis that spans multiple levels of abstraction, encompasses a plurality of perspectives, and can be tailored to include contextual nuances. …

Rethinking Organizational Structures To Support Digital Innovation, Lindsey Wharton, Devin Soper

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

This paper presents a vision for supporting the growth and development of innovative digital services in research libraries. While libraries have been undergoing digital transformation for decades, we have seen a flowering of new digital services in recent years, from research support services related to data and digital publishing to learning support services that seek to make our pedagogy more accessible, engaging, and suited to the needs of 21st-century learners. The question of how best to support these services structurally within an organization remains an open one, however, and there is little consistency in how this is accomplished across different …

Reckoning With Organizational Identity And Innovation In Research Libraries, Neil Romanosky

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

Who or what an organization thinks it is—its sense of identity—greatly informs the choices it makes. Yet an organization’s identity, which provides coherence and stability, may constrain or enable an organization’s capacity for innovation, which at its core is about doing new or different things. This paper explores the dynamics of organizational identity and innovation through a qualitative study involving leaders from eleven U.S. and Canadian academic research libraries—organizations and a profession that are experiencing an abundance of change and identity threats. A major finding of this research is that the very process of scoping and defining innovation can enable …

Fostering Innovation In The Library's Experiential Studio, C. Jeffrey Belliston

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

The paper focuses on the Harold B. Lee Library’s Experiential Studio, which is an interdisciplinary design space where students, faculty, and librarians from multiple colleges and departments can work together on solving compelling social problems. Many courses taught in the studio have employed design thinking processes to foster innovation and the studio itself is a product of design thinking with the most recent iteration having opened in January 2020. Some courses taught in the space since its inception in 2014 have been community collaborations—some local, some national, and some international. A local collaboration included working with the Lee Library to …

Student Information Use And Decision-Making In Innovation Competitions And The Impact Of Librarian Interventions, Heather A. Howard, Dave Zwicky

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

At a large Midwestern university, librarians work closely with an annual undergraduate agricultural innovation competition to guide students through the process of conducting market research and assessing patentability. In 2018, the authors conducted an exploratory study using focus groups of students who had participated in that year’s competition in order to learn how students find and use information in a competition setting, to evaluate the impact of library support on the students’ success, and inform further assessment activities. Results showed that students used information from the library and from their own research, notably seeking out first-hand expertise, to practice evidence-based …

Inspiring Novel Application Of Technology And Self-Directed Learning In Library Makerspace, Dr Shirley Chiu-Wing Wong

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s mission is to nurture next generation of critical thinkers, effective communicators, innovative problem solver, and global citizens. Opened to all students in September 2017, the i-Space of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Library is designated to ignite students’ spirit of innovation and facilitate the development of self-directed learning.

The vision of the i-Space is to lower the barrier of entry of the latest technology for students of all disciplinary and inspire novel application in their disciplinary work. Students can explore different technologies, including 3D scanning, 3D printing, laser cutting, vinyl cutting, Virtual Reality, Internet of …

Student Information Use And Decision-Making In Innovation Competitions, Heather A. Howard, Dave Zwicky

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

At a large university in the Midwestern United States, librarians work closely with an undergraduate agricultural innovation competition. Librarians serve as entrepreneurial information guides, providing business information instruction and consulting with student groups to mentor them through the innovation process. The competition, with a winning prize of $20,000, focuses on developing new products from soybeans to foster environmental stewardship and reduce reliance on petroleum. Competitions are a form of experiential learning, allowing students to fully experience the product design process and practice making evidence-based decisions. In order to progress through this competition, the students’ inventions must be shown to have …

Applying Empathy-Driven Participatory Research Methods To Higher Education New Degree Development, Lisa Bosman, Abrar Hammoud, Sandhya Arumugam

Technology Leadership and Innovation Faculty Publications

Purpose: Innovation and entrepreneurship are economic drivers promoting competition and growth among organizations throughout the world, many of which would not exist without well-established new product development processes coupled with intentional and strategic focus on research and development. New product development processes, such as the lean start-up methodology and design thinking, are well-known and thriving as a result of empirically-grounded research efforts. Unfortunately, educational institutions and educational researchers, alike, are lagging when it comes to new program/degree development processes. Although the quantity of new degree offerings has increased substantially over the past several decades (in particular for multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and …

Innovation, Entrepreneurship, And The Spirit Of Digital Capitalism, Collin Chua

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and the Spirit of Digital Capitalism,”Collin Chua analyzes the myth of innovation and the fantasy of entrepreneurship. The article draws on foundational perspectives regarding the spirit of capitalism established by Max Weber, later extended by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello. The myth of innovation is interrogated, as innovation now operates as a rhetorical and managerial strategy that must be pursued in order to be competitive in today’s capitalist system. The fantasy of entrepreneurship is explored, as it serves as a coping mechanism for the fragmentation and erosion of traditional work arrangements and structures. The article …

Profile Interview With Sabine Brunswicker, Jia Lin Cheoh

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Jia Lin Cheoh is a third-year undergraduate student in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University, working with support from a national fellowship award. She was an independent study student under Dr. Sabine Brunswicker, working on the Purdue IronHacks for the past two years. She enjoys guiding students and working as a software developer on the Purdue IronHacks platform (www.ironhacks.com) with Dr. Brunswicker in HONR 299 and TECH 499 on open data hacking. Her team contributed to multiple novel web applications developed by students from various backgrounds.

Social Brokerage, Psychology, And Innovation In Intra-Organizational Networks, Hongzhi Chen

Open Access Dissertations

As an important organizational phenomenon, brokerage is common in any group of three or more. A recent meta-analysis shows that brokerage is one of the most influential network properties to individual innovativeness (Baer, Evans, Oldham, & Boasso, 2015). This dissertation investigates the impacts of social brokerage on the micro-foundation of corporate innovation, i.e., generating new projects and getting new things done. In addressing the social psychological foundations of brokerage (Tasselli, Kilduff, & Menges, 2015), this dissertation investigates the influential contexts around the broker and revisits the “human agency” issue in brokerage phenomena in the setting of corporate innovation.

Chapter One …

Innovative Novel Immunotherapies For The Treatment Of Glioblastoma Multiforme, Salma Salem

Open Access Theses

Glioblastoma Multiforme GBM is a very aggressive type of malignant brain tumors that affects peoples’ lives. The diffusive, infiltrative, and metastatic behaviour of GBM is the major reason for the disease recurrence. The morphological and immunohistological characteristics of Central Nervous System (CNS) tumors including GBM are heterogeneous. GBM is either primary (de novo) or secondary to low-grade astrocytomas.

Current treatment options include surgery, radiotherapy, and temozolomide chemotherapy have not achieved any improvement in success rates over the past decades. The survival time reached by GBM patients was approximately 12 months only after being treated with radiotherapy alone without temozolomide. However, …

Measuring Mashup Similarity In Open Data Innovation Contests, Zhounan Song

Open Access Theses

Contests have become an important instrument for fostering the development of novel open data mash-ups, in short open data innovations. Literature calls for new methods for measuring the similarity of open data mash-ups in order to identify code cloning and creative re-use of components of applications. Theoretically grounded computationally methods for identifying the similarity of open data contests are lacking. This study explores the similarity measurement of data-based mashups in the context of an open data innovation contest. Three different dimensions of mashup similarity are defined: code similarity, functional feature similarity, and visualized feature similarity. The results from the contest, …

Inquiry And Innovation In The Classroom: Using 20% Time, Genius Hour, And Pbl To Drive Student Success, Aysenur Ozyer, Brent G. Wilson

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

No abstract provided.

Creativity In Organizations: Antecedents And Outcomes Of Individual Creativity, Goran Calic

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation I set out to expand our collective understanding of creativity in organizations. I accomplish this through three related studies, each organized into independent chapters of this dissertation.

The first study explores how demands of organizations, particularly strategic contradictions faced by decision makers, affect creative processes and products. In this chapter I develop the theory of paradoxical creativity, which posits that creative discovery is a function of how strategic contradictions are perceived by decision-makers. The key insight of the theory of paradoxical creativity is that strategic contradictions have independent effects on the two stages of creative discovery (generation …

Innovation As Everyday Action: A Case Study Of Organizational Discourse And The Local Meaning Of Innovation, Jennifer C. Batra

Open Access Theses

This study describes and explicates the nuanced nature of commonly adopted buzzwords such as innovation by analyzing how innovation is defined and embedded structurally within a single organization. Working to uncover how the individual construction of a local definition of innovation within the global context of a quasi-academic organization changes as organizational priorities and practices evolve over time, I present the varied framings of innovation at the micro, meso, and macro levels, through two research phases (a) the definition phase and (b) the practice phase over the course of one year.

This thesis project is situated within a single Mid-Western …

Academic E-Books: Publishers, Librarians, And Users, Suzanne M. Ward, Robert S. Freeman, Judith M. Nixon

Purdue University Press Books

Academic E-Books: Publishers, Librarians, and Users provides readers with a view of the changing and emerging roles of electronic books in higher education. The three main sections contain contributions by experts in the publisher/vendor arena, as well as by librarians who report on both the challenges of offering and managing e-books and on the issues surrounding patron use of e-books. The case study section offers perspectives from seven different sizes and types of libraries whose librarians describe innovative and thought-provoking projects involving e-books.

Read about perspectives on e-books from organizations as diverse as a commercial publisher and an association press. …

Changes In Teachers’ Adaptive Expertise In An Engineering Professional Development Course, Taylor Martin, Stephanie Baker Peacock, Pat Ko, Jennifer J. Rudolph

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

Although the consensus seems to be that high-school-level introductory engineering courses should focus on design, this creates a problem for teacher training. Traditionally, math and science teachers are trained to teach and assess factual knowledge and closed-ended problemsolving techniques specific to a particular discipline, which is unsuited for teaching design skills for open-ended problems that may involve multiple engineering disciplines. Instead, engineering teacher training should use the more fluid framework of adaptive expertise which values the ability to apply knowledge in innovative ways as well as recall facts and solve problems using conventional techniques. In this study, we examined a …

User Interface Design Evaluation For L-Thia Watershed Analysis Tool., Lakshya Garg, Larry Theller, Yichen Zhong

Purdue GIS Day

This project is a semester-long analysis of the user interface deign of the ABE web-Based Decision support tool "L-THIA Watershed Management System". The goal is to evaluate the components such as user inputs, logical flow, graphical display, navigation, operational feasibility and technical feasibility. The process includes comparison to the interface of other of other well-known online mapping web tools. The student team will be evaluating under GIS specialist Larry Theller (Purdue ABE) some other online watershed analysis tools. The result of this study will be incorporated in the next phase of tool development for L-thia and several other ABE web …

Identifying Key Factors Of Engineering Innovativeness, Kathryn Jabloklow, Senay Purzer, Daniel Ferguson, Matthew Ohland, Jessica Menold

School of Engineering Education Faculty Publications

Identifying key factors of engineering innovativenessSignificant resources are spent nationally and locally to foster innovation, yet limited research exists onthe personal characteristics of innovators, especially those found in engineering. This three-yearcollaborative research project, currently in its second year, has led to the identification of specificattributes associated with engineering innovators, with the potential to inform a broad range of people,from engineering students to engineering educators to practicing engineers and their managers. Throughthis project, we have developed a socially constructed set of key engineering innovativenesscharacteristics based on the views of a diverse group of engineering innovation experts. We have alsodetermined which characteristics …

University Of The Future Colombia-Purdue Workshop Report, Suresh V. Garimella, David B. Janes, Liliana Gómez Díaz

PPRI Digital Library

The University of the Future Workshop, a joint Colombia-Purdue event, was held at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, October 28-29, 2014. Participants included rectors and board members from six top universities in Colombia, along with executive directors of NGOs, government representatives from the U.S. and Colombia, and Purdue faculty and administrators. The workshop was focused on a dialog among participants on key programs and focuses that will allow universities to be responsive to the 21st century needs of the Americas.

This report is a summary of the workshop and is based on the contributions of all the participants. Key …

Characterizing Enabling Innovations And Enabling Thinking, Freddy Solis

Open Access Dissertations

The pursuit of innovation is engrained throughout society whether in business via the introduction of offerings, non-profits in their mission-driven initiatives, universities and agencies in their drive for discoveries and inventions, or governments in their desire to improve the quality of life of their citizens. Yet, despite these pursuits, innovations with long-lasting, significant impact represent an infrequent outcome in most domains. The seemingly random nature of these results stems, in part, from the definitions of innovation and the models based on such definitions. Although there is debate on this topic, a comprehensive and pragmatic perspective developed in this work defines …

Twenty Years Of Compressor Innovation At Ntu, Singapore, Kim Tiow Ooi

International Compressor Engineering Conference

In this paper, innovations in refrigeration compressors and their mechanisms which were conceptualised (and some of these were commercialised) at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore over the past twenty years are discussed and presented. These innovations include piezo compressor [1-3], sliding cam compressor [4], rotaprocating compressor [5], revolving vane compressor and its variants [6-14], revolving vane expander [15] and cross-vane mechanism for expander-compressor unit [16]. The revolving vane compressor had won the World Best Technology Showcase, in Arlington, Texas, USA in 2009 and it has licensed to a Japanese compressor company for air-conditioning applications in automobile and private boats sectors, …

Improving Problem-Based Learning In Creative Communities Through Effective Group Evaluation, Richard E. West, Greg S. Williams, David D. Williams

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

In this case study, we researched one cohort from the Center for Animation, a higher education teaching environment that has successfully fostered group creativity and learning outcomes through problem-based learning. Through live and videotaped observations of the interactions of this community over 18 months, in addition to focused interviews with nine key community leaders, we considered the evaluative culture and actions of this community, and how these evaluative practices improved their creative problem solving. We describe their evaluation practices in the context of principles derived from the Joint Committees’ Evaluation Standards (Yarbrough, Shulha, Hopson, & Caruthers, 2011), which are well-respected …

Fostering Innovation Through Cultural Change, Julia Leong

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate a range of approaches to promoting innovative thought and action which can be applied in a variety of organizational contexts. It describes strategies adopted by one large academic library which sought to increase employee engagement and levels of innovation. Included is an overview of the background situation, a description of cultural change activities undertaken, information on recent provision of a suite of practical innovation process tools, and reference to relevant literature.

RMIT University has developed a framework (leadRMIT) which seeks to strengthen leadership capability and confidence and lift the engagement and performance …

Innovation, Creativity And Meaning: Leading In The Information Age, Tomalee Doan

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Today’s fast pace global environment requires information professionals to be leaders keeping pace with user needs. Two academic research libraries share their work seeking to ensure and leverage the creativity in their organizations focusing on the most meaningful innovative opportunities. The premise is that usefulness and appropriateness is achieved through strategic alignment – thereby opening the door of opportunity for innovative products and services. The ability to seize the opportunity each group seeks to meet is due to the recognition by the organization of that alignment. And so, organizational perception, awareness and value all impact the successful implementation of creativity. …