This paper studies the inventive performance and profitability of small and medium sized firms (SMEs) that are “technology specialists” compared to the inventive performance and profitability of SMEs that are instead vertically-integrated. In this paper perspective, “technology specialists” are firms that specialize upstream in generating inventions and trade those inventions in disembodied for...

The transition from conventional power sources to renewable energy sources is taking place in a number of European countries. Electric energy storage has been proposed as an environmentally friendly solution to make this transition possible. This thesis analyzes the profitability of investing in a battery bank in Germany and the UK, using a real options model. The model determines the option va...

The paper investigates issues of scale equivalence and generalisability across different populations. This area of research is important because it allows for valid comparisons to be made when studies investigate the same constructs across qualitatively distinct populations. The study investigates the generalisability of the Narver and Slater (1990) and the Kholi, Jaworski and Kumar (1993) mode...

Fuel cells are on the verge of market entry aiming at replacing long established conventional electricity generation and propulsion technologies. Upon entrance to the /rst markets the necessarily higher costs will need to be o0set by added value to the consumer. Examples, discussed here, indicate that generally speaking the highest additional cost margins will be achievable through lifestyle or...

Economies are sometimes viewed as analogous to ecological systems in which "everything is connected to everything else." In complex modern economies, the question arises whether the market mechanism can appropriately coordinate all the interconnections or whether instead some supramarket body is needed to coordinate the vast web of human activities. This study describes how an idealized decentr...

As businesses strive to respond to customer demand at an acceptable cost in the face of market turbulence and volatility, interest in supply chain agility as the ability to address such market uncertainties has grown. As a research in progress paper, we will examine the ways in which supply chain agility is enabled through IT-enabled information processing capabilities and advance prior work in...