COVID-19 and digital transformation: developing an open experimental testbed for sustainable and innovative environments using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps

This paper sketches a new approach using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) to operably map and simulate digital transformation in architecture and urban planning. Today these processes are poorly understood. Many current studies on digital transformation are only treating questions of economic efficiency. Sustainability and social impact only play a minor role. Decisive definitions, concepts and terms stay unclear. Therefore this paper develops an open experimental testbed for sustainable and innovative environments (ETSIE) for three different digital transformation scenarios using FCMs. A traditional growth-oriented scenario, a COVID-19 scenario and an innovative and sustainable COVID-19 scenario are modeled and tested. All three scenarios have the same number of components, connections and the same driver components. Only the initial state vectors are different and the internal correlations are weighted differently. This allows for comparing all three scenarios on an equal basis. The Mental Modeler software is used. This paper presents one of the first applications of FCMs in the context of digital transformation. It is shown that the traditional growth-oriented scenario is structurally very similar to the current COVID-19 scenario. The current pandemic is able to accelerate digital transformation to a certain extent. But the pandemic does not guarantee for a distinct sustainable and innovative future development. Only by changing the initial state vectors and the weights of the connections an innovative and sustainable turnaround in a third scenario becomes possible.

Itaipu Technology Park: An Eco-Innovative Niche for Renewable Energies

Technology parks are considered innovative environments for the development of new technologies, in a dynamic that can be explained by the micro level of multilevel analysis of the theory of sociotechnical transition, by contributing to explain the actors responsible for the process of development and dissemination of technology. The cases analyzed were composed of companies and eco-innovative projects in the renewable energy area of the Itaipu Technological Park. The methodology was based on a study of multiple cases of qualitative nature, supported by content analysis and triangulation of information. The main results showed that the ITP, with the support of its maintainer Itaipu Binacional, created an environment conducive to the development of eco-innovative companies in renewable energies, stimulating the exchange of knowledge between companies and favoring partnerships with national and international companies for technological development.

PROCUREMENT MANAGEMENT: ISSUES OF THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE INNOVATION ECONOMY

The article deals with the topic of technology management in innovative environments, especially in the field of technological acquisition as a process. Some concepts and practical elements of technological acquisition and their significance for innovative companies are described. Some theories, methods and strategies for ensuring an effective process are evaluated, as well as factors that influence the processes of technology acquisition in companies. It is about the general aspects of the relationship between technology management and innovation management as a reference for describing the technological procurement process.

Gastronomic Entrepreneurial Profile and Factors Influencing the Potential of Business Internationalization

The current challenge for the survival and growth of international businesses is the appropriation of innovation in all its senses. This chapter attempts to analyze the contextual framework of international entrepreneurship and the importance of the entrepreneur's profile that influences the potential to generate innovative environments in relation to success in doing business abroad. This analysis aims to answer the questions of strategic thinking that can be a critical factor in business competitiveness and contribute to its success.

Targeting economic development with science and technology parks and gateway cities: Schumpeterian possibilities of new developmental states in fostering local and global development

ABSTRACT In this paper, we investigate how innovative environments as a local strategic policy with particular features of the new entrepreneurial developmental state associated to what we call a Schumpeterian-style of policy can transform regions of middle-income countries, like Brazil. In particular, we sought to answer the following research question: how the São José dos Campos Science and Technology Park (STP-SJC) has been used as a tool to promote regional development? To answer it, having a logical model of this policy in perspective, we focus on this environment’s main objectives and empirically we performed a case study applying process tracing methodology.