Digital Commons Network^™

Feminist Pragmatism In The Nonprofit Sector, Elise L. Kieffer

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

This thought paper explores the practical applications of the feminist pragmatism philosophy for modern nonprofit organizations confronting persistent issues. I argue that the integration of research, theory, education, programming, and administration serve as spokes strengthening the wheel that is the nonprofit sector.

Civilizational Heritage In The Age Of Innovation: Exploring The Importance Of Civilizational Heritage In The 21st Century, Bibi Pelić, Ulrike Michel-Schneider

Comparative Civilizations Review

‘What has civilizational heritage to do with innovation?’ you may ask. ‘I just got the latest iPhone and don’t see any connection.’ You would not be the only one to ask this question.

If we backtrack a thousand years or so and look at innovations from the past, such as the Via Appia or the Colosseum, did the Romans think about civilizational heritage when they built these two magnificent structures? Did they care about civilizational heritage? What about the ancient Egyptians whose building innovation, ‘the pyramid,’ is still an enigma for us today?

Innovation is thus nothing new, but it …

The Prosperity Paradox, A Review, Ryan Stenquist

Marriott Student Review

No abstract provided.

India's Compulsory License Model: Increased Pharmaceutical Access And Innovation Coexist, Bela Gandhi

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

India faces a drug access issue. By using compulsory licenses India can increase access to pharmaceuticals through generics and protect innovation of pharmaceutical patents. Similarly situated countries will benefit from India’s model to improve affordable generics while requiring strict voluntary license application requirements and drug trials for biosimilars.

Fight, Flight, And Freeze: Human Responses In A Business Strategy Environment, Michael Nixon

Student Works

Fight, flight, and freeze responses are a natural part of how we operate as humans. These responses permeate our lives and affect our decisions in major ways. This thesis first employs a case study to help the reader understand natural reaction processes, then analyzes case studies where businesses applied strategies that closely resembled these reaction processes. I then propose a framework to mimic physiological reaction processes to help companies arrive at the optimal solution.

Collaborative Innovation In Global Teams: A Case Study Of The Startup Grind Inc. Global Community Team, Camey L. Andersen

Student Works

The Startup Grind Inc. Global Community Team was studied to show how creativity and innovation occur in a global virtual team. Innovation occurred by choosing team members who were committed to a creative team environment. Team creativity online was strengthened by providing opportunities for the global virtual team to meet in person. Alternative brainstorming methods outside the scheduled team meetings also added to the overall innovation of the team. Flexibility with the virtual office and meetings provided a platform for the team to think outside the box. Team members achieved a unity of ideas as they used innovation and creativity …

Lean Six Sigma's Impact On Firm Innovation Performance, Austin Michael Strong

Theses and Dissertations

Following Toyota's dramatic rise to prominence within the automotive industry in the late 1980's, firms around the globe have widely sought to adopt Lean Six Sigma (LSS) as a means of reducing costs, improving quality, and gaining an overall competitive advantage. While the operational benefits of LSS are largely undisputed, there are criticisms of the movement with regards to its effect on firm innovation capability. Prior academic studies investigating the relationship between LSS and innovation are largely conceptual in nature, rely heavily on qualitative data, and display a high degree of variability in results. The objective of this work was …

Addressing The Regulator's Dilemma: A Self Drive Framework For Balancing Safety And Innovation, Craig Maughan

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

Policymakers are tasked with creating regulations that responsibly oversee the growth and deployment of emerging technologies. I argue that the SELF DRIVE Act, currently being deliberated in Congress, offers one such intelligent regulatory structure for autonomous vehicles: it prioritizes public safety over adherence to outdated requirements, giving innovators greater freedom to field-test new designs. More importantly, I examine how key principles of the SELF DRIVE Act should be applied to other emerging technologies currently facing regulatory roadblock. Specifically, I suggest the drone industry be subject to regulatory changes that incentivize safety, allow exploration, and anticipate future growth. Such regulations allow …

Integrating A Creativity, Innovation, And Design Studio Within An Academic Library, Holt Zaugg, Melissa C. Warr

Faculty Publications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the efforts to set up a creativity, innovation, and design (CID) studio within an academic library. This paper will describe the reasons for creating a CID studio, assessment of the pilot study, and next steps.

Design/methodology/approach – The assessment used surveys, interviews, focus groups and observations of students and faculty to determine how well the CID fits into the library.

Findings – Initial findings indicate that the CID studio is a good fit within the library space as learning activities in it support collaboration, discovery, and integration of library services. …

Investigating If Multidisciplinary Or Homogenous Teams Are More Innovative In A Higher Education Setting, Blake Howard Hoover

Theses and Dissertations

This study is derived from the claim that multidisciplinary groups are more innovative than homogeneous groups; a claim that has flooded the business industry and has become criteria for accreditation in higher education. However, the impact of disciplinary diversity in work groups is a growing area of research; therefore, it is yet to be thoroughly understood. The purpose of this study is to answer the question: are multidisciplinary teams more innovative than homogenous teams. To accomplish this university students from differing majors were sorted into multidisciplinary and homogeneous groups while participating in a two-day innovation course. The course taught the …

Group Flow In The Byu Animation Studio, Jana Lynn Duncan

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation encompasses three articles concerning Sawyer's (2007) theory of group flow in the context of higher education, including a literature review, and two interpretive studies. In the literature review and in the first interpretive research article, the results of the research illuminated the applicability of themes of group flow in collaborative settings in higher education in themes of vision, ownership and contribution, and communication. The final article provides a description of the roles of student lead and professor in this environment and the unique ways that they may have encouraged those themes in the studio. The context for this …

Pipes, Pools And Filters: How Collaboration Networks Affect Innovative Performance, Harpeet Singh, David Kryscynski, Xinxin Li, Ram Gopal

Faculty Publications

Innovation requires inventors to have both "new knowledge" and the ability to combine and configure knowledge (i.e. "combinatory knowledge") and such knowledge may flow through networks. We argue that both combinatory knowledge and new knowledge are accessed through collaboration networks, but that inventors' abilities to access such knowledge depends on its location in the network. Combinatory knowledge transfers from direct contacts, but not easily from indirect contacts. In contrast, new knowledge transfers from both direct and indirect contacts, but is far more likely to be new and useful when it comes from indirect contacts. Exploring knowledge flows in 69,476 patents …

'Det Ny Fra Thy': Historical Innovation In A Peripheral Place, Poul Houe

The Bridge

When we say in English that a certain innovation "takes place" or in Danish: finder sted, which means literally, "finds place" -both linguistic idioms, "takes" or "finds" place, suggest that the role of place is not accidental. This is obviously pivotal in geography, but also in anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and a host of cultural studies, sometimes in the form of "mental geography." Recent Danish book titles suggest as much: Dan Ringgaard's Stedssans (Sense of Place), Anne-Marie Mai's Hvor litteraturen finder sted (Where literature Takes Place) in 3 volumes, and Ringgaard & Mai's anthology Sted (Place).

The Performance Of Risk Management And Innovation In Construction Manager/General Contractor Delivery In Civil Construction Applications, Rebecca M. Owens

Theses and Dissertations

Project teams that deliver high risk, complex projects in the civil construction industry need tools to enable successful delivery. Construction Manager/General Contractor (CM/GC) is an innovative alternate delivery method, providing one such a tool. CM/GC furnishes public agencies with an attractive option for delivering projects in a less adversarial and more constructive manner by involving the contractor during design. The sophisticated public owner does not have to relinquish control of the details of the design in order to accelerate the schedule or see the benefits of real-time cost estimating data. There are also significant cost and schedule benefits with not …

Communities Of Innovation: Composition, Climate, And Process Variables In Group Innovation, Bradley D. Marianno

Theses and Dissertations

Drawing upon the Communities of Innovation (COI) framework, this study seeks to identify the composition (functional demographic diversity), team climate (vision, participatory safety, task orientation, support for innovation), and process (group reflection, group flow, group conflict, dynamic expertise) variables that influence team-level innovation. Using data from 15 business school teams enrolled in a class on innovation and entrepreneurship, I explore the extent to which the proposed composition, team climate, and process variables discriminate between high-ranking and low-ranking innovative teams. I also investigate the degree to which these variables are conceptually and empirically distinct. Given the relative importance of dynamic expertise …

Development And Initial Validation Of An Innovation Assessment, Jacob D. Wheadon

Theses and Dissertations

In the past two decades, there has been an increased demand for more innovative individuals and organizations. In response to this need, a number of groups have begun to teach innovation courses to improve people's innovation skills. While many of these groups report success in helping people become more innovative, there is no way to test the effectiveness of the innovation courses. This study describes the development and initial validation of an innovation test instrument. It demonstrates how the author identified the content domain of the test and created test items. Then it describes initial validation testing of the instrument. …

Creativity And Innovation: A Comparative Analysis Of Assessment Measures For The Domains Of Technology, Engineering, And Business, Tyler Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this literature review is to investigate and discuss: (1) the characteristics measured by innovation assessments, and (2) the comparison of characteristics measured by creativity assessments with those of innovation assessments. This will be done by: (1) collecting creativity and innovation assessments, and (2) comparing and contrasting the characteristics measured by each assessment. This study reveals that innovation assessments do not measure the innovation process in its entirety. The findings show that creativity and innovation assessments lack in assessing the entire innovation process, assessing the innovation process on an individual level, and assessing an individual's change or growth …

Shopping Carts And Student Employees: How Student Committees Can Bring Innovative Ideas To Academic Libraries, Quinn Galbraith, Sara D. Smith

Faculty Publications

In 1999, ABC’s Nightline asked IDEO, a well-known innovation and design consultancy, to redesign the shopping cart in five days. While the challenge of re-imagining a cultural icon “inexplicably stuck in a sort of an innovation limbo”1 drew enough interest, even more compelling was the process the IDEO team used to research, brainstorm, and design the new model. The IDEO team threw out middle-management hierarchies based on experience or seniority—the project leader, who had only worked with IDEO for six years, was chosen for his skill in leading groups. The team members came from many disciplines, including psychology, architecture, linguistics, …

Imaginative Instruction: What Master Storytellers Can Teach Instructional Designers, Jason K. Mcdonald

Faculty Publications

Good instructional storytelling engages students’ attention and cognitive abilities to the end of more effective learning, and instructional researchers have discussed whether the principles of storytelling could lead to the same or similar results if applied to educational situations beyond only telling traditional stories. But despite this potential, the principles of storytelling are seemingly underutilized by today’s instructional designers. This study investigates what instructional designers might learn from another design field that is more experienced in the art of storytelling, specifically that of film production. Eight filmmakers who have successfully produced films that motivate, inspire, and educate were interviewed to …

Open Source, Openness, And Higher Education, David Wiley

Faculty Publications

With the growth of open source software and other related trends, a culture of openness is advancing from the edges of society to the core of academic culture. In this article I provide an overview of how the expansion of open source software in culture at large has affected the world of education, describe how the greater use of open source software in education has unfolded hand-in-hand with the development of open course content and open access research, and argue that this more comprehensive shift towards "openness" in academic practice is not only a positive trend, but a necessary one …

Patent Law: Protecting Innovation In A Global Economy, Nathan O. Jensen

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

For over 200 years, the United States has been renowned for the ingenuity of its citizens, such as Franklin, Edison, and Ford. The Government has recognized this ingenuity as a national asset and has developed a code of statutes, known as Intellectual Property Law, enabling its citizens to protect and benefit from their own creativity. In the present global marketplace, these laws are increasingly vital to the competitive success of our country's technology-based economy. Patent law is one part of the larger field of Intellectual Property Law, which also includes copyright, trademark, and trade secret law.