Abstract:Recently, innovative changes in information technology (IT) trends, such as cloud computing and deep learning, have led IT companies to focus on collaboration for sustainable growth. This paper investigates collaboration strategies and success factors for IT service companies via a survey-based empirical study of Korean leading IT firms. Four types of collaboration were identified by considering the types of customer relationship and the target market: offshore, joint venture, collaboration with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and partnership with major local firms. Then, based on a Plan-Do-See management activity process, this paper considers success factors in the planning process and collaboration process, and analyzes an impact of these factors on collaboration performance such as financial performance, process innovation, improving competitiveness, and technology acquisition. As a result, the success factors differ according to the types of performance measures as well as the collaboration types. In particular, the characteristics of partners positively influence competitiveness in captive and global markets, while they improve process innovation in open and domestic markets. This study attempts to provide insight for companies in the IT service industry about how collaboration activities could enhance performance, depending on the alliance types.
Mutual growth in the relation between large firms and small-medium enterprises (SMEs) has been an important issue that can be overcome with the concept of open innovation, which is the most continuous research topic in technology innovation. However, most previous studies on open innovation barely analyse both firm types, focusing only on one party. The aim of this study is to develop open innovation models for complementary cooperation between both types of firms in manufacturing industry. Based on a basic understanding of open innovation in each firm type, this study suggests open innovation typology with two main concepts of open innovation: knowledge interaction and technology innovation. Finally, open innovation models are developed, considering the cooperative participants, their relationships in open innovation processes, and open innovation activities illustrated through case studies. The results contribute to manage strategic open innovation between large firms and SMEs through various approaches of cooperation.
In this work an environmentally-friendly aqueous solution process was elaborated to produce hydroxyl-rich anatase nanocrystallites of very large surface area. The aqueous-synthesized nanocrystalline anatase material was shown to have favorable physical properties (e.g. 160-280 m2/g specific surface area, 5~8 nm crystallite size, high concentration of OH surface groups) for fabricating photoanodes for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The fabrication process involved paste preparation, "double-layer" screen printing, annealing and sensitization with the N719 dye [cis - (2,2'- bipyridyl - 4,4'- dicarboxylate)2 (NCS)2 ruthenium(II)]. Photocurrent -voltage measurements of DSSCs based on the aqueous-synthesized titania showed higher photocurrent and conversion efficiency when compared to cells built from commercial benchmark nanotitania materials. The enhanced performance of the aqueous titania-based DSSC is discussed on the basis of extensive characterization work that included XRD, TEM, UV-Vis and Raman/ATR-FTIR spectroscopy.
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