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Given the increasing interest in sustainable food consumption and production, this study aims to understand how consumers perceive the value proposition of vegan food. Over 120,000 tweets relating to veganism were extracted from Twitter, which were then analysed using the text analytics tool Leximancer to ascertain the predominant themes of conversation taking place around vegan food. Our results show that, in light of the three main drivers for vegan food choice—ethical, personal health, and environmental—surprisingly, we see a limited number of environmental or sustainability motivated tweets. This is a significant finding, as, while vegan food consumption is reported to be sustainable, this is not a preferred topic of conversation for consumers. Value propositions communicated with respect to personal health attributes (e.g., dairy free, gluten free, and nutrition), and consumption benefits (e.g., tasty, delicious) are more likely to resonate with consumers and motivate increased consumption while concurrently delivering environmental benefits as a positive side-effect. Furthermore, the polarity of the attitudes and conversations taking place between vegans and non-vegans on Twitter underscores that a single value proposition is unlikely to reach both groups simultaneously and that different value propositions are likely to be required to reach these respective groups.

Despite their importance little is known about how innovation ecosystems come into existence. We address this gap through an historical case study Herceptin, a revolutionary drug developed for the treatment of ovarian and breast cancer, and the innovation ecosystem that emerged around this drug between 1978 and 1998. Through qualitative content analysis of a broad scope of archival documents (2474 in total), we define a cast of roles and determine their timing of entry onto the stage of ecosystem emergence, and in turn describe the interaction of these roles that govern emergence. We find that the locus of ecosystem emergence shifts gradually from discovery, resource provision and commitment, to the formation of connections and trust, and finally to complementarity and value creation. These activities are facilitated by specific roles that gain significance at various points in time. We additionally witness shifts in interaction dynamics, from individual level interactions early on, to interactions across levels, and finally to interactions at the organisational level. We synthesize these findings to propose a framework of a processual understanding of how innovation ecosystems come into existence., Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public., Economics of Technology and Innovation

Linkages between science and technology have been extensively studied using nonpatent literature citations or author-inventor matching. These methods suffer from limitations, such as the lack of citations to relevant documents or challenges with the disambiguation of author–inventor linkages. To mitigate these limitations, this paper uses Latent Dirichlet Allocation to create topic-based linkages between publications and patents based on the semantic content in the documents. The approach allows for the detection of topical overlap between patent and scientific publications, highlighting topical areas shared by research and application. Using a case study on “Taxol,” a cancer drug, with in total 26 475 documents retrieved from EuropePMC database the study illustrates the performance of the approach. The study offers qualitative and quantitative support that the approach is valuable in detecting patent and publication linkages.

Background: Today's meat and dairy industry has a vast environmental footprint. To reach the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) of ending hunger globally (SDG #2) and achieving sustainable consumption and production (SDG #12), this food production system needs to change. Recent years have seen the rise in popularity of the vegan or plant-based diet among consumers, which can go some way to reducing the environmental burden. This trend has motivated pioneering food producers to develop innovative vegan food products for niche markets, thus driving the sustainability transition of the food sector. Scope and approach: This commentary tracks how three pioneering food companies have responded to the vegan trend in Europe. From the analysis of the sustainable innovation journeys of these innovative food producers, we propose a framework that presents a multi-level perspective on the socio-technical transition of the food production and consumption system. Key findings and conclusions: The findings show how food producers, incumbents, and new entrants progress through an early phase of planning a direction and establishing a goal, followed by pivoting and experimenting in response to changes in the business environment. This innovation journey concludes as the company moves from experimentation and learning activities onto innovation implementation. The paper postulates a model that describes how regime level changes arise from the microfoundations of the food production and consumption system, as the innovation journeys of companies drive institutional change towards sustainability. The paper identifies future research avenues to explore the sustainable development of vegan food production in more depth.

This chapter examines how the discourses surrounding veganism, and the public perceptions of those who follow vegan diets, are changing. It will argue that entertainment has played a central role in the growth of this dietary and culinary culture, has catalysed a significant shift in in the public perceptions of veganism, and fostered a heightened awareness of the broader implications of those dietary choices. Popular documentaries such as Cowspiracy, Forks Over Knives, and What the Health have catalysed attention to both the environmental and health benefits of vegan diets, and moved the focus away from the more traditional animal cruelty arguments, on which those aforementioned negative connotations were largely formed. Meanwhile, media producers and personalities like Rich Roll have also helped popularise plant-based diets in recent years, and helped to re-define the links between meat and masculinity. This chapter argues that this ‘vegan sphere’ requires further analysis to understand how it might be expanded and further popularised to facilitate continued bottom-up cultural change for positive environmental and public health outcomes.

The impetus for this paper was a unique opportunity: the practical, real-world application of open innovation (OI) paradigms in the creation of a model for a new orchestrator organisation. The Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Hub will be a not-for-profit company based in Queensland, Australia, with a mission to accelerate innovation-led economic growth in Australian manufacturing. It will function as a network orchestrator for the manufacturing sector. While scholarly attention to OI continues to grow, in light of the model’s ability to generate real-world value using open rather than closed innovation approaches, we are unaware of any case studies examining the application of OI principles to the creation of a new orchestrator: a company that occupies a central, catalytic role in an innovation ecosystem. Addressing this gap, this paper identifies the key OI considerations in the establishment of the ARM Hub. The authors examine a range of sources, synthesising the extant literature on OI and orchestrators, and drawing upon empirical knowledge gathered in a practical, design-led workshop with the Hub’s academic stakeholders. The result is a set of guiding principles for the ARM Hub as it prepares to launch in early 2020. This study will be of interest to scholars of OI as well as innovation managers, policy makers and investors; and to businesses seeking to navigate contemporary open innovation practices through a design thinking approach.

This paper studies the motivations and personality traits of retro-tech adopters. From a survey conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk with 466 respondents, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis to establish motivational factors, and then ran a correlation analysis to determine the relationships between these motivations and the facet-level traits of the BFI-2 model. Our findings indicate that retro-tech consumers are not a homogenous adopter category, as individuals are affected by different motivations — aesthetic, fashionability, nostalgic positive emotionality, non-conformism and quality. Our study additionally suggests a cyclical conceptualisation of the diffusion of innovations model, or its extension to include a new group of retro-adopters.

We undertake an inductive study of four firms developing industry platforms upon which potentially disruptive IoT products and services are developed by external firms. Our results indicate there to be four types of industry platform (generalist, specialist, technology-centric, and industry-centric), each facilitating a unique mode of disruptive change. We propose that technology-centric platforms are more likely to facilitate business model disruptions, while industry-centric platforms are more likely to facilitate technological disruptions. Generalist industry platforms, by con-trast, are able to facilitate both business model and technological disruptions, given the freedom they allow IoT firms to build their product and service solutions.

We undertake an inductive study of four firms developing industry platforms upon which potentially disruptive IoT products and services are developed by external firms. Our results indicate there to be four types of industry platform (generalist, specialist, technology-centric, and industry-centric), each facilitating a unique mode of disruptive change. We propose that technology-centric platforms are more likely to facilitate business model disruptions, while industry-centric platforms are more likely to facilitate technological disruptions. Generalist industry platforms, by con-trast, are able to facilitate both business model and technological disruptions, given the freedom they allow IoT firms to build their product and service solutions.

This paper takes a micro-level perspective to analyse and enhance our understanding of the birth phase of an innovation ecosystem. More specifically, the objective is to understand the role of the actors and factors during early stage of the birth and development of an innovation ecosystem. This early period in the ecosystem’s lifecycle is crucial to comprehend as it is the foundation for the subsequent phase of growth, which marks the increasing economic activity across interdependent firms and industries. Moreover, the volatility and high degree of uncertainty of the ecosystem can challenge the commitment of the heterogeneous constellation of actors, and the factors which enable birth and growth of the ecosystem. Given the nature of the research questions, an in-depth case study of a medical-device innovation within Australian biomedical sector carried out to investigate a contemporary innovation ecosystem. The research has uncovered a number of actors and factors that played a seminal role in the birth and growth of the innovation ecosystem in question.

This conceptual paper extends the traditional view of disruptive change, which considers the effects of rivalry between an incumbent and new entrant firm, by examining the impact of disruption upon the ‘innovation ecosystem’ in its entirety – the group of organisations that collaborate in creating a holistic value proposition for the end-user. Following Adner’s “ecosystem-as-structure” perspective, we develop propositions that anticipate structural differences between incumbent and disruptive innovation ecosystems, and then review these propositions in the context of three historical, disruptive innovation cases; Bakelite (a synthetic plastic), microwave oven, and photocopier. Through these cases, we illustrate that the manner of innovation ecosystem reconfiguration is likely to depend on the design attributes of the product, as well as the type of disruption experienced. We conclude by reflecting upon contemporary cases of disruption enabled through digital technologies, and proposing a framework that can guide future research.

Introduces the research papers included in a Special Issue that arose out of the newly created ISPIM special interest group on Platforms and Ecosystems. Each article was developed from a paper presented at the ISPIM Innovation Conference in Vienna, Austria, June 18–21, 2017.

Despite accounting for a very small percentage of the population that adopts an innovation, the ‘innovators’ and ‘early adopters’ — representing the two earliest groups of individuals to acquire the new product or service — play a crucial role in the dissemination of the innovation to larger market segments. The objective of this paper is to understand the characteristics of these individuals that positively influence their decisions to adopt innovations. We argue that awareness of these traits will enable firms to attain speedier uptake of their offerings while aiding policymakers achieve quicker and wider proliferation of new technologies intended for societal benefit. We undertake a review of the literature studying the diffusion of innovations and show future directions that this framework should take to analyse the adoption lifecycle.

Despite the calls for a broader methodological base, the technology management and the forecasting literature remain short of studies synthesising quantitative and qualitative methods. This paper addresses this gap by employing a mixed method approach to study the case of Taxol, a revolutionary drug developed to fight ovarian and breast cancer. The paper shows in detail how a data mining-based network model can be synthesised with qualitatively created event narrative to understand the development of a technology and its ecosystem. As a result, the paper shows an npartite network of Taxol drug ecosystem containing over 4,000 nodes and 11,000 edges. The network enables decision makers to understand the process, interaction of actors and lock-in mechanism in the process of technological development.

This conceptual paper extends the traditional view of disruptive change, which considers the effects of rivalry between an incumbent and new entrant firm, by examining the impact of disruption upon the ‘innovation ecosystem’ in its entirety – the group of organisations that collaborate in creating a holistic value proposition for the end-user. Following Adner’s “ecosystem-as-structure” perspective, we develop propositions that anticipate structural differences between incumbent and disruptive innovation ecosystems, and then review these propositions in the context of three historical, disruptive innovation cases; Bakelite (a synthetic plastic), microwave oven, and photocopier. Through these cases, we illustrate that the manner of innovation ecosystem reconfiguration is likely to depend on the design attributes of the product, as well as the type of disruption experienced. We conclude by reflecting upon contemporary cases of disruption enabled through digital technologies, and proposing a framework that can guide future research., Economics of Technology and Innovation