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The use of disruptive technologies--as the robotic one--to solve societal challenges is described in this article through the innovative PDTI (Public end users Driven Technological Innovation) instrument, were the public entity drives the research and development of innovative solutions assisted by a technological expert team. The PDTI and the use case developed in urban scenarios through the ECHORD++ European Project offered us the opportunity to check the procedure of the innovative public procurement PCP (Pre Commercial Procurement) instrument and propose changes and improvements in order to improve public services or create new ones boosting robotic SMEs, products and services to the market. This novel procedure, the PDTI, is based in the participation of all the stakeholders involved along the process. The ECHORD++ Urban PDTI results bring two pre commercial robotic solutions waiting for a large order to be commercialized and 14 innovative robotic challenges proposed by European cities that could be the starting point for new innovative public procurement PCPs or PDTIs. The specific results obtained in this robotic use case could be generalized to other technological domains and to other scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Technology Based Firms (NTBF) operate in high-velocity environments that make considerable demands about the speed of strategic choices. This study draws upon strategic decision-making and organization theories to propose that strategic decision making speed mediates the relation between personal, organizational and environmental factors and performance. Hypotheses were theoretically developed and tested with data from an empirical investigation of Mexican NTBF. Measures of personal characteristics, organization structure, business environment, strategic decision speed and performance were collected from 103 Technology Founder Managers at the end of 2012. The results confirmed that strategic decision making speed influences the performance of NTBF and mediates the relation of uncertainty, CEO model, dynamism and hostility with firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The tourism industry has become a major part of economic development for many countries. These countries have greatly invested in tourism to attract more tourist arrivals. Hence, the need for more accurate forecasts of tourism demand is important. Various approaches have been applied to forecast tourism demand of different countries. However, tourism demands tend to be imprecise and their trends nonlinear. In addition, there may be drastic changes in the tourism demand time series. To properly handle these problems, this study proposes an innovative forecasting model to detect the regime switching properly and to apply fuzzy time-series model to forecast. The monthly tourist arrivals to Taiwan will be used as forecasting target. The analysis by the proposed model will be validated by the major events as well as previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors reflect on the steps taken whereby universities respond to the needs of their communities and regions and in the process transform themselves into entrepreneurial universities. They are particularly concerned with the metamorphoses of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Universitat Poltècnica de Catalunya) and of its so-called Innova Programme. Universities that successfully and proactively react to their environments will evolve through three stages: the vertical university, the dot matrix university, the conventional university, to arrive at the technopolis university stage. Structural patterns, governance, relations among stakeholders, and funding mechanisms must evolve to suit the needs of each stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]