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Innovative Ideas (innovative + idea)
Selected AbstractsElizabeth I as StepmotherENGLISH LITERARY RENAISSANCE, Issue 2 2009Jacqueline Vanhoutte As a number of scholars have shown, Tudor male subjects were able to arrogate to themselves unprecedented powers by playing gender against class hierarchies. This essay considers how tropes of surrogacy furthered this process of political enfranchisement. As Victor Turner suggests, recurrent tropes are dynamic phenomena, which change meaning over time in a way that reveals the "emotional and volitional dimensions" present in social contexts. The prevalence of surrogate mothers in Elizabethan political and literary discourses reflects such a volitional dimension: writers (e.g. Lyly and Shakespeare), courtiers (e.g., Sir Philip Sidney), and politicians (e.g. members of Parliament) used images of stepmothers in consciously manipulative ways. Because of the ambiguous nature of figurative language, these men posited innovative ideas indirectly long before it became possible to articulate them directly. The evil stepdames of Tudor lore form an important precedent for John Locke's enlightened "foster father," whose acquired authority undermines the divine rights of fathers and kings. Stepmother tropes provided an alternative to the dominant analogies between family and state,analogies that aimed at suppressing disobedience and rebellion and at naturalizing the status quo. While men like Sidney and John Stubbs probably intended only limited applications for their stepmother tropes, this essay shows that these tropes called their monarch's absolute rule into question and justified their own political activity. Elizabethan writers thus contributed to the process of unmooring the English monarchy from divine right ideology, a process that culminated, intellectually speaking, in Locke's insistence on the consensual nature of government. (J.V.) [source] The future of energy and environment,innovative ideas for decarbonizationIEEJ TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING, Issue 1 2007Yoichi Kaya Director General [source] The relationship between nursing leadership and nurses' job satisfaction in Canadian oncology work environmentsJOURNAL OF NURSING MANAGEMENT, Issue 5 2008GRETA G. CUMMINGS PhD Background, Current Canadian oncology work environments are challenged by the same workforce statistics as other nursing specialties: nurses are among the most overworked, stressed and sick workers, and more than 8% of the nursing workforce is absent each week due to illness. Aim, To develop and estimate a theoretical model of work environment factors affecting oncology nurses' job satisfaction. Methods, The sample consisted of 515 registered nurses working in oncology settings across Canada. The theoretical model was tested as a structural equation model using LISREL 8.54. Results, The final model fitted the data acceptably (,2 = 58.0, d.f. = 44, P = 0.08). Relational leadership and physician/nurse relationships significantly influenced opportunities for staff development, RN staffing adequacy, nurse autonomy, participation in policy decisions, support for innovative ideas and supervisor support in managing conflict, which in turn increased nurses' job satisfaction. Conclusions, These findings suggest that relational leadership and positive relationships among nurses, managers and physicians play an important role in quality oncology nursing environments and nurses' job satisfaction. Implications for nursing management, Oncology nursing work environments can be improved by focusing on modifiable factors such as leadership, staff development and staffing resources, leading to better job satisfaction and hopefully retention of nurses. [source] FOUNDING A NEW SCIENCE: MIND GENOMICSJOURNAL OF SENSORY STUDIES, Issue 3 2006HOWARD R. MOSKOWITZ ABSTRACT We present in this article our vision for a new science, modeled on the emerging science of genomics and the technology of informatics. Our goal in this new science is to better understand how people react to ideas in a formal and structured way, using the principles of stimulus,response (from experimental psychology), conjoint analysis (from consumer research and statistics), Internet-based testing (from marketing research) and multiple tests to identify patterns of mind-sets (patterned after genomics). We show how this formal approach can then be used to construct new, innovative ideas in business. We demonstrate the approach using the development of new ideas for an electronic color palette for cosmetic products to be used by consumers. [source] Plant neurobiology and green plant intelligence: science, metaphors and nonsenseJOURNAL OF THE SCIENCE OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURE, Issue 3 2008Paul C Struik Abstract This paper analyses the recent debates on the emerging science of plant neurobiology, which claims that the individual green plant should be considered as an intelligent organism. Plant neurobiology tries to use elements from animal physiology as elegant metaphors to trigger the imagination in solving complex plant physiological elements of signalling, internal and external plant communication and whole-plant organisation. Plant neurobiology proposes useful concepts that stimulate discussions on plant behaviour. To be considered a new science, its added value to existing plant biology needs to be presented and critically evaluated. A general, scientific approach is to follow the so-called ,parsimony principle', which calls for simplest ideas and the least number of assumptions for plausible explanation of scientific phenomena. The extent to which plant neurobiology agrees with or violates this general principle needs to be examined. Nevertheless, innovative ideas on the complex mechanisms of signalling, communication, patterning and organisation in higher plants are badly needed. We present current views on these mechanisms and the specific role of auxins in regulating them. Copyright © 2007 Society of Chemical Industry [source] Managing innovative R&D teamsR & D MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2003Hans J. Thamhain Successful R&D groups not only generate innovative ideas, but also transfers these newly created concepts through the organizational system for economic gain. While innovation is not a random process, managers often argue that R&D performance is hard to measure and even more difficult to manage. An exploratory field study into technology-oriented R&D environments determines the principle factors that influence innovation-based performance of R&D teams. The results identify specific barriers and drivers to innovative team performance and provide insight into the type of an organizational environment and managerial leadership that is conducive to innovative R&D team performance. The data further suggest that many of the performance variables have their locus outside the R&D organization. Yet, managerial leadership style, both at the R&D team level and at senior management, has significant impact on creativity that ultimately affects R&D performance. [source] Twenty Years of the Journal of Product Innovation Management: History, Participants, and Knowledge Stock and FlowsTHE JOURNAL OF PRODUCT INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2007Wim Biemans The Journal of Product Innovation Management (JPIM) serves as a marketplace for science-based, innovative ideas that are produced and consumed by scholars and businesspeople. Now that JPIM has existed for 20 years, two intriguing questions emerge: (1) How has the journal evolved over time in terms of knowledge stock, that is, what are the characteristics of the growing stock of knowledge published by JPIM over the years; and (2) how has the journal evolved in knowledge flow, that is, how is JPIM influenced by other scientific publications and what is its impact on other journals? In terms of knowledge stock, over 35% of the articles published over the 20 years investigate processes and metrics for performance management. The next most frequently published area was strategy, planning, and decision making (20%), followed by customer and market research (17%). The dominant research method used was a cross-sectional large-sample survey, and the focus most usually is at the project level of the firm. The large majority of JPIM authors (60%) have a marketing background, with the remaining 40% representing numerous functional domains. Academics at all levels publish in JPIM, and though most authors hail from North America, the Dutch are a significant second group. JPIM was analyzed from a knowledge-flow perspective by looking at the scientific sources used by JPIM authors to develop their ideas and articles. To this end a bibliometric analysis was performed by analyzing all references in articles published in JPIM. During 1984,2003 JPIM published 488 articles, containing 10,314 references to journals and 6,533 references to other sources. Some 20% of these references (2,020) were self-references to JPIM articles. The remaining 8,294 journal references were to articles in 287 journals in the fields of management (25%), marketing (24%), and management of technology (14%). However, it should be pointed out that many domains were dominated by a limited number of journals. The second component of knowledge flow concerns the extent to which the ideas developed in JPIM are consumed by other authors. Again, bibliometric analysis was used to analyze data from the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) about citations to JPIM in other journals. For the period 1984,2005, the SSCI registered 7,773 citations to JPIM in 2,067 articles published in 278 journals (including the 2,020 self-citations in JPIM). The functional areas most frequently citing JPIM are management of technology (25%), marketing (15%), management (14%), and operations management and management science (9%). Again, several domains were found to be dominated by a limited number of journals. At the level of individual journals the analysis shows a growing impact of JPIM on management of technology journals. The knowledge-flow analysis demonstrates how JPIM functions as a bridge between the knowledge from various domains and the body of knowledge on management of technology. It suggests a growing specialization of the field of technology innovation management, with JPIM being firmly entrenched as the acknowledged leading journal. [source] | |||||||||||||