This paper presents a literature review discussing empirical as well as conceptual papers concerning the CTO - the Chief Technology Officer - his tasks, responsibilities and authority and his relations with other corporate functions. It further presents first results of a CTO survey conducted in...

In a study of Japanese New Product Development (NPD) projects, the fuzzy front end of innovation is explored. Our conceptual model is based on the information-processing perspective. A structual equation model was fitted to data from 497 NPD projects from Japanese mechanical and electrical...

In this paper, we report on the results of a large-scale study about typical front-end-related innovation practices in 553 Japanese mechanical and electrical engineering companies. We explore typical activities concerning the generation and assessment of new product ideas, the reduction of...

In this paper we report on the results of an interview research about new product development (NPD) processes and planning in 15 Japanese mechanical and electrical engineering companies. We asked the companies to describe one successful and one less successful project. All in all, we collected...

In this paper, we are going to report on the results of an exploratory piece of research about the typical front-end-related activities in 28 innovation projects carried out by 14 German and 13 Japanese companies to reduce project uncertainty. In all cases we observed a range of activities to...

In this paper, we report the complete and unabridged results of an exploratory study of typical front-end activities in 28 innovation projects in German and Japanese companies. We further reveal differences in the practice of innovation management in both countries. Based on these, we develop...

In the physical sciences, order and disorder refer to the presence or absence of some symmetry or correlation in a many-particle system. It follows that it is important to examine whether there is any regularity hidden in the phase transition of the disorder-order relationship. In this paper a...

The challenges of financial systems have immediate or medium-term social effects. The financial industry is constantly searching for measures to reduce these challenges, especially for those with little or no access to financial services. While current communication technologies make services...

The significant role of new ventures in economic and social development has led practitioners and researchers to search for the factors that affect new venture performance. In the Chinese apparel industry context, relationship ('guanxi') as a central idea in Chinese society deeply influences all...