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This paper explores co-design in Japanese education for deploying data-driven educational technology and practice. Although there is a growing emphasis on data to inform educational decision-making and personalize learning experiences, challenges such as data interoperability and inconsistency with teaching goals prevent practitioners from participating. Co-design, characterized by involving various stakeholders, is instrumental in addressing the evolving needs of technology deployment. Japan's educational context aligns with co-design implementation, with a learning and evidence analytics infrastructure facilitating data collection and analysis. From the Japanese co-design practice of educational technologies, the paper highlights a 6-phase co-design framework: motivate, pilot, implement, refine, evaluate, and maintain. The practices focus on data-driven learning strategies, technology interventions, and across-context dashboards, covering assorted learning contexts in Japan. By advocating for a co-design culture and data-driven approaches to enhance education in Japan, we offer insights for education practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and industry developers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractOne factor leading to compromised Quality of Life (QoL) for people with dementia in long-term care settings is the significant barriers they face in accessing experiences beyond their physical premises. Although, in recent years, research within HCI has investigated the use of Virtual Reality (VR) in providing enriched experiences for people with dementia, few studies have looked into the practical issues relating to integrating and deploying VR into care settings and how in-depth understanding of such issues can inspire VR design for dementia care. Considering the perspective of key stakeholders, we demonstrate VR’s potential to create a rich conversation space with family members, preserve the identity and personhood of people with dementia through VR, and consider organisational issues of VR deployment in care settings. As such, this paper contributes to the HCI research community with future design directions to enhance the deployment and adoption of VR in dementia care settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featured Application: Enabling business-process and industry-agnostic identification of XR technology deployment use cases through a taxonomy of value-adding deployment purposes. With increasing computing power and data transmission performance of information technologies, the application scenarios for Extended Reality (XR) technologies in industries are growing. Despite the ongoing scientific investigation of industrial XR applications for over 25 years, these technologies are still considered emerging. Within this paper, we present an industry- and business-process agnostic approach for classifying the deployment purposes of XR technologies in value creation. We identified two major research streams regarding the role of XR technologies in value creation: (1) the research initiatives focusing on business-process-specific use case analysis and (2) industry-oriented research reviews. This results in limited identification of suitable application scenarios for new use cases and restricted transferability of the existing use case to future deployments. First, we provide a qualitative analysis of the current research streams. Then, in the second step, by abstracting the XR technology from the existing business processes and the industry-specific context, the generic purposes for XR technologies in value creation are identified and defined. The summary of these deployment purposes results in a taxonomy that enables the identification and transfer of potential use cases of XR technologies in value creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The successful and fast development and deployment of renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction technologies is a continuing and structural challenge. The deployment of these technologies is slowed down and sometimes even stalled due to societal challenges like public resistance, lack of appropriate policy and regulations, unsolid business cases and uncertainty concerning the impact on the environment. In this paper we elaborate on societal aspects that influence technology development and deployment and introduce the societal embeddedness level (SEL) framework. Building upon the technology readiness level (TRL), the SEL framework enables the assessment of the current level of societal embeddedness of energy technologies in order to identify the societal aspects which need to be taken into account to accelerate deployment of energy technologies. The SEL framework takes into account four societal dimensions (impact on the environment, stakeholder involvement, policy and regulations, and market and financial resources) and four stages of technology development (exploration, development, demonstration and deployment) that are linked to the TRL. The SEL framework has been elaborated for CCS technologies and is being applied to the monitoring of geological CO2 storage by the ACT II project DigiMon (Digital Monitoring of CO2 storage projects). DigiMon is an ACT second call project, funded by the national funding agencies in the period September 2019–August 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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With increasing computing power and data transmission performance of information technologies, the application scenarios for Extended Reality (XR) technologies in industries are growing. Despite the ongoing scientific investigation of industrial XR applications for over 25 years, these technologies are still considered emerging. Within this paper, we present an industry- and business-process agnostic approach for classifying the deployment purposes of XR technologies in value creation. We identified two major research streams regarding the role of XR technologies in value creation: (1) the research initiatives focusing on business-process-specific use case analysis and (2) industry-oriented research reviews. This results in limited identification of suitable application scenarios for new use cases and restricted transferability of the existing use case to future deployments. First, we provide a qualitative analysis of the current research streams. Then, in the second step, by abstracting the XR technology from the existing business processes and the industry-specific context, the generic purposes for XR technologies in value creation are identified and defined. The summary of these deployment purposes results in a taxonomy that enables the identification and transfer of potential use cases of XR technologies in value creation.

The successful and fast development and deployment of renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction technologies is a continuing and structural challenge. The deployment of these technologies is slowed down and sometimes even stalled due to societal challenges like public resistance, lack of appropriate policy and regulations, unsolid business cases and uncertainty concerning the impact on the environment. In this paper we elaborate on societal aspects that influence technology development and deployment and introduce the societal embeddedness level (SEL) framework. Building upon the technology readiness level (TRL), the SEL framework enables the assessment of the current level of societal embeddedness of energy technologies in order to identify the societal aspects which need to be taken into account to accelerate deployment of energy technologies. The SEL framework takes into account four societal dimensions (impact on the environment, stakeholder involvement, policy and regulations, and market and financial resources) and four stages of technology development (exploration, development, demonstration and deployment) that are linked to the TRL. The SEL framework has been elaborated for CCS technologies and is being applied to the monitoring of geological CO2 storage by the ACT II project DigiMon (Digital Monitoring of CO2 storage projects). DigiMon is an ACT second call project, funded by the national funding agencies in the period September 2019–August 2022.

New computer technology is often seen as the key to the future of manufacturing. Much of the research on the benefits of technology has focused on automation in the factory and its effects on productivity. There have been convincing arguments that in fact the product development stage has a greater impact on cost, quality, and profitability than improvements in the manufacturing stage. Arguably, technology can make an even greater impact in the development stage. This comparative case study examines the introduction of 3D scanning technology (3DS) in the sites of two automotive companies. We found that product development technology was beneficial when it enabled collaboration, visualization and enabled product realization or analysis. We observed that the firm that did not carefully integrate its technology deployment with higher levels of employee involvement and continuous improvement such as one found in lean or socio technical systems (STS) achieved fewer improvements. Product development technologies like 3DS need to be carefully enmeshed with the current work structure to maximize gains in quality and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Productivity (TFP) performance is not only influenced by the direct effects of human capital, R&D (technology development)), embodied and disembodied forms of technology transfer and know-how through capital imports, FDI and use of foreign IPRs (technology transfer activities), but importantly is indirectly affected by compo-nents like the interactive effects of machinery and equipment imports, royalties and licenses fee payments, FDI, human capital and technology deployment. In this context, we analyzed internal technology building capabilities, trade-related technology transf-er activities and foreign technology absorption capabilities. The ARDL technique demonstrates that stable long-run association exists amongst all the chosen variables. The results indicate that investment in human capital boost the TFP, in addition expenditures on R&D, imports of machinery are crucial determinants of TFP growth. Surprisingly, FDI appears with a negative sign but the indirect effect of FDI through its interaction with human capital is positive. This indicates that FDI in the presence of human capital plays a favourable role in enhancing TFP. Moreover, the imports of machinery directly and indirectly, in association with both human capital and R&D, increase the growth of TFP. These findings provide evidence that internal technology building capabilities enhances the TFP growth significantly; while, embodied form of technology transfer has a positive and significant impact on the growth of TFP; whereas, disembodied technology transfer exerts positive but statistically insignificant impact on TFP growth. Furthermore, the study lends support for the existence of strong foreign technology absorption capabilities.

The nature of post-merger technological progress outcomes is unclear, with theoretical and empirical literature being inconclusive and equivocal. We contend that merger motives materially drive post-merger outcomes and that post-merger outcomes vary significantly because merger motives vary. Hence, assessments of post-merger outcomes should take into account such motives, by the use of suitable statistical constructs. Our retrospective study has empirically assessed post-merger technology deployment patterns in the US telecommunications industry over a considerable recent historical period of major institutional changes. The events have provided information enabling us to conduct a detailed evaluation of the relative outcomes of differently motivated mergers under clean natural experiment conditions. Mergers have been classified as those undertaken for consolidation, financial, and market exploitation reasons. We have found consolidation and market exploitation motivated mergers to have had a positive impact, resulting in materially greater technology deployment outcomes for firms experiencing these mergers. The largest category of mergers that the firms have engaged in have been of the liquidity-seeking type, and such liquidity-seeking mergers have resulted in materially lower levels of technology deployment outcomes. On balance, we unequivocally conclude that negative lower technology deployment outcomes have outweighed the positive higher technology deployment outcomes. Such results should meaningfully influence agencies' approaches in deciding whether or not to permit important sector mergers under review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries are targeting the rapid and deep decarbonization of their energy supply, with renewable energy technologies playing a key role. Despite increased technology maturity and dramatically decreased costs, the deployment momentum of renewables often lags behind ambitious policy commitments. Accordingly, policymakers must accelerate the development of projects to meet decarbonization goals. However, we currently lack a comprehensive understanding of how long projects of renewable energy take to commission, whether projects are executed faster as technologies mature, and which factors affect the timelines – this knowledge gap affects policymakers and energy researchers providing model-based policy advice alike. To fill this gap, we analyzed global commissioning times between 2005 and 2022, drawing on the data for 12,475 projects using solar photovoltaic (PV), wind onshore, wind offshore, biomass, and run-off-river hydro in 48 countries. We found that average commissioning times have increased substantially over the past two decades for all renewable energy technologies of all project sizes. This finding highlights the need to incorporate up-to-date commissioning times in energy models to generate realistic model-based policy advice. In addition, we identified five categories of factors that affect commissioning timelines, conducted cross-sectional analyses with fixed-effect models, and present implications for policymakers, businesses, and researchers. • Analysis of 12,475 projects in 48 countries using 5 renewable energy technologies. • Novel evidence that commissioning times have increased in the last two decades. • Empirical evidence on factors that affect commissioning time of projects. • Lessons from a global analysis for researchers, policymakers, businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature is replete with concerns on the environmental impact of steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), but rigorous analysis of its improved environmental performance over the past 20 years remains unresolved, as well as the underlying technological reasons for this improvement. Here, we present an analysis of historical and future greenhouse gas (GHG) performance of SAGD operations in Alberta, Canada, considering for the first-time factors that affected technology deployment. Depending on the case, the results show a reduction of 1.4–24% of SAGD GHG intensity over the past 12 years. Improvements mainly arise from incremental changes adopted based on technical, environmental, socio-economic, and policy drivers. Considering these factors, we propose policy interventions to accelerate further reductions of GHG emissions. However, if similar behaviour from industry continues, anticipated GHG intensity reduction will range between 6.5–40% by 2030, leading to an intensity between 58 and 68 kgCO2e/bbl. It still remains unclear if in situ oil sands bitumen extraction will reach current conventional oil emission intensities. Thus, we suggest that the SAGD industry drastically accelerate its deployment of cleaner oil sands extraction technologies considering the policy insights proposed.

Smart meters are crucial technologies for enabling smart grid solutions and applications. Although smart metering deployment has been started at the national and regional levels, there is still the question that how should the costs of deployment be allocated among stakeholders. Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is the common method for analyzing the economic feasibility of the deployment process. Starting from the CBA approach, this paper argues an efficient cost recovery scheme depends not only on the costs and benefits for each actor, but also on the interdependencies between the behavior of different actor groups. By taking a dynamic modeling approach and using System Dynamics models, this study examines the dynamics of interaction between different actors in the technology deployment process, and proposes scenarios for an efficient cost recovery. It is claimed that a dynamic view to the common Cost-Benefit Analysis approach has three advantages. First, the possibility of including actors benefiting from positive externalities or actors that can contribute to system efficiency is provided. Second, a balance can be found between the short term and long term consequences of system interventions; and finally, the development of innovative solutions, in the forms of business and policy scenarios is facilitated. The results may explain why reluctance to participate in the technology deployment process persists even after introducing dynamic pricing policies, and what factors are more critical in analyzing the cost and benefit structures of the technological system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decarbonising the European economy is a long-term goal in which the residential sector will play a significant role. Smart buildings for energy management are one means of decarbonisation, by reducing energy consumption and related emissions. This study investigated the environmental impacts of smart house automation using life cycle impact assessment. The ReCiPe method was selected for use, in combination with dynamic emissions factors for electricity in Finland. The results indicated that a high level of technology deployment may be counter-effective, due to high electricity consumption by the sensor network, automation system and computing devices. The results also indicated that number of inhabitants per household directly affected the environmental impacts of home automation. A single-person household saw its environmental impacts increase by 15%, while those of a five-person household increased by 3% in the worst-case scenario. The manufacturing phase contributed the major share of environmental impacts, exceeding the use phase in multiple categories. These findings indicate that finding the sweet spot in which technology can promote decarbonisation will be crucial to achieving the goal of a low‑carbon economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While low-carbon energy technologies are often regarded as a key solution to climate change mitigation, the successful transformation to a clean energy economy requires a solid scientific understanding of the technological change process and the role of public policies. To better support effective policy making, we conducted a comparative case study to investigate how the choice of policy bundles has led to the cross-national variation in smart meter deployment in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. We found that countries with a combination of policy measures that address multiple barriers to smart meters tend to be leaders, while laggards often overlook or fail to adopt policies to overcome key barriers. This research builds on technology diffusion and policy impact assessment literature and provides valuable insights on the design of effective policy tools to promote clean energy innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovations that initiate new technology cycles, i.e., radical innovations, bring tremendous value to Society and build for the companies that deploy them sustainable competitive advantages. However, large firms have typically been relatively inefficient at accessing from academia or technology start-ups such technological leaps. Indeed, most multiyear and multimillion dollar academia-industry partnerships have historically not resulted in any acceleration of the rate of deployment of game-changing innovations, which empirically proceeds in 25 year cycles, such as for example the expansion of the scope of the pharmaceutical industry from small molecules to biologics, or, projecting into the future, to siRNA or therapeutic stem cell technologies. Syndicated innovation venturing is a new strategic partnering concept described here that brings together actors from different economic segments in a non zero-sum game as a means to facilitate seed-funding, with the aim to de-risk technologies while reducing initial financial exposures. A case study in the pharmaceutical industry suggests that alleviating this hurdle may provide an appropriate environment to improve the dynamics of academic technology transfer to the commercial phase. By contributing to the de-risking of the creation of novel biotechnology businesses, this novel mechanism could help speed up the commercialization of emerging technologies on a large scale. At a time when knowledge-based firms such as pharmaceutical companies attempt to revisit their innovation models to advance science, in spite of an environment of increasing risk-aversion, such responses could tilt the balance in favor of disruptive products and sustained corporate financial performance by removing common barriers to radical innovation deployment.

National ‘green growth’ strategies, which aim at decoupling economic development from adverse environmental impacts, have become a new paradigm for policymakers in developing countries. Many green growth strategies are based on policy instruments designed to incentivize the domestic deployment of relatively mature clean technologies and aim at fostering the formation of a local industry to develop and produce these technologies. While the empirical evidence on the localization effect of such policies in developing countries is mixed, there is a dearth of research systemically analyzing how differences between technologies affect patterns of localization, which could explain the observed variance. We address this gap and develop a typology which distinguishes four types of technologies requiring different types of capabilities. We do so by combining insights from the literature on technology transfer and catching-up of industries with insights from the literature on patterns of innovation across the technology life- cycle. We apply this typology to the case of low-emission development strategies and four exemplary low-carbon technologies, namely small and micro hydro power, wind turbines, electric cars, and solar cells, in order to analyze capability requirements, innovation patterns, and the effect of past deployment policies on industry localization. We synthesize these case studies and derive a heuristic to anticipate the localization effects of deployment policies for different types of technologies in countries with varying income levels. We argue that the heuristic can serve as starting point for policymakers aiming at clean technology industry localization. The paper concludes with a discussion of possible technology-specific green growth strategies for developing countries with different income levels and for international institutions supporting green growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biomass is a promising renewable source that can reduce fossil fuel consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions, but some of its characteristics make it difficult to use in its raw form. Torrefaction has been proposed as a thermochemical pretreatment to upgrade biomass for direct applications such as combustion and gasification, biochar and chemicals production, while reducing its transportation cost and increasing its shelf-life. Research, development, and demonstration of biomass torrefaction technologies have advanced during the last few decades, but many science and engineering fundamentals as well as technological challenges remain, especially in the areas of reaction thermodynamics and kinetics, reactor models and design, large-scale implementation, and environmental performance. In this paper we present a comprehensive review of recent developments in biomass torrefaction research and technology focusing on kinetics, particle and reactor scale models, and reactor designs. The impacts of torrefaction as a pretreatment of biomass on subsequent conversion processes, and the novel applications of torrefied biomass are discussed. The energy management, environmental impacts, economic and market potential of the technology as well as the deployment options are also addressed. There is no best universal torrefaction reactor and hence the choice should be made based on the biomass feedstock and the expected production rate and application. To reduce process costs and competition with other uses of biomass, the utilization of either waste or environmentally sustainable, more abundant, and faster growing biomass should be targeted for this technology. Torrefied biomass produced at higher temperatures resemble pyrolysis biochar in several properties thereby making it suitable for most biochar applications. Finally, considering the need to identify the bottlenecks that potentially could limit the use of torrefaction, and its preceding or subsequent processes, the future prospects, challenges, and opportunities of torrefaction technology are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]