Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

More and more business organizations recognize the relevance of sustainable innovations as driving factor for their corporate strategies, products and processes. But while the concept of sustainability is generally ratified by employees and consumers, their willingness to actually use or buy such innovations can be low. One of the most important facilitators for the adoption of innovations is self-experience generated by testing the innovation. This paper provides insight on how sustainable innovation testing affects consumer mindsets and which barriers consumers face when considering testing a sustainable innovation. The study draws on the data from an in-depth interview study with seven providers and consumers of electric cars (as sustainable innovation) in business and private environments. Insights about the nature of consumer’s willingness to test are extracted and recommendations for the design and use of information systems as facilitators for testing sustainable innovations are derived.

Title: High performance management and their impact on business results: the case of Uruguay and ArgentinaThe main objective of the study is to identify which high-performance management practices have the greatest impact on business results. Using de Waal model, 56 executives from Uruguayan and 30 Argentine companies were interviewed, analyzing which practices prioritize, the progress in their implementation and their results. It is found that, regardless of the country, the characteristics of the company and of the executive, the practices related to continuous improvement and renewal have a greater impact on the essential results (profitability, income, growth). It is verified that, although the more a practice is prioritized, the better it is implemented, the results are significantly related to the progress in the implementation reaffirming the importance of the execution capacity.

Innovation capacity is on the focus of policy makers in emerging economies. Although some studies show the antecedents of innovation capacity for developed economies and high technological industries, scant research outcomes exist for different settings. This study tries to shed some light on the drivers of innovation capacity for low technological companies in emerging economies. Using the absorptive capacity as a driver of technological and non-technological innovation capacity, this study proposes a SEM model to contribute to the literature of innovation capacity including technological and non-technological innovation, and the relationship between them, in low-techonology industries in an emerging economy. A sample of 706 manufacturing companies from Peru is used. The academic contribution of this study states that absorptive capacity favors technological and non-technological innovation capacity and that non-technological innovation affects technological one. Accordingly, managerial contribution suggests improving absorptive capacity levels to internal R&D activities but also to organizational and marketing innovation activities.

The objective of this article is to analyze comparatively the importance of intellectual capital and the impact of intellectual capital on the performance of Brazilian companies awarded the Rio Grande do Sul Quality Award in 2004 and 2017. A sample of 72% of the Brazilian companies that received this Quality Award of the Gaucho Quality and Productivity Program in 2004 and 70.5% in 2017 were investigated. It can be affirmed that intellectual capital continues to be an essential asset, but during this period there have been some changes concerning the level of presence and importance among the elements that compose it. Regarding the changes in the influence of intellectual capital on organizational performance between 2004 and 2017, the results showed that intellectual capital, through human, structural and client capital, practically still has the same level of influence on organizational performance.

The article describes the social technology’s role in the TCM attractiveness from the retailers’ perspective. The exploratory research experience in Sweden during different periods between 2012 and 2016 includes contributions of the literature, direct interviews and analysis of the TCM’s websites. The state-of-the-art of social commerce perception by managers and retailers is defined, and specific evidences are given through research. An interpretation of the concept of attractiveness of the TCM is presented to explain how social commerce could affect this property. Dissonance between opinions and statements of TCM stakeholders are discussed, and the will to use social commerce to increase opportunities for TCM is, in general, declared by retailers, but it is not realized in practice in management activities. A comparative empirical exploration between different countries could be conducted in future. This paper explores the actual situation in the use of website sustaining that the social commerce and the social networks are able to go beyond the supporting of commerce activity and they are able to support the TCM attractiveness and place attachment.

The expansion of the use of biofuels is based on the implementation of public policies to support production, technological development and the market. In Brazil, the National Program for the Production and Use of Biodiesel (PNPB) seeks to articulate these incentives and attract private initiative in promoting sustainable production. Investigating the business actions for the development of new technologies in the face of public stimulation motivates this article that aims to analyze the Research and Development (R&D) strategies of Petrobras Biocombustível in the production of biodiesel. The case study is based on the theoretical arguments of the Entrepreneur State and on a case study accompanied by a qualitative analysis. The results indicate that the formation of agricultural research networks favored the construction of knowledge, research infrastructures and training of people, but did not innovated the production of biodiesel.

La sociedad de la información ha favorecido la adopción del e-commerce como un mecanismo para ampliar los mercados, considerando las preferencias de las comunidades, donde los medios sociales son potentes herramientas que permiten el éxito en las transacciones a través del s-commerce. El estudio es descriptivo y se realizó a empresarios (N=287) del sector calzado en Bucaramanga (Santander-Colombia) para determinar su percepción sobre el uso de los medios sociales como estrategia de comercialización. Se destaca la utilización de Facebook, Instagram, YouTube y Twitter como los más aceptados por sus propiedades de conexión, y, Taobao, E-bay, Amazon, Linio y Mercado Libre, como canales oficiales de comercialización. Finalmente, se proponen estrategias para adoptar las TIC para incrementar la competitividad en las organizaciones.

Modern competition is tough due to emergent information systems and technologies. Managers must cope with these challenges continuously to keep their businesses sustainable. An important step is to employ strategies based on open innovation. This work analyses where Portugal stands in terms of innovation in general, propensity for open innovation and innovation sustainability. An HJ-Biplot methodology was applied to a valid sample from CIS 2012 (Community Innovation Survey). It suggests that Portuguese firms must cut back on activities that are not leading to the outcomes needed. Also, with the right partners they can have more ideas executed and diffused.

The objective of this work is to propose a rapid methodology called Overview Case Analysis (OCA) to analyze in a synthetic and simple form, the tremendous amount of information that is created through the years in a technology transfer project. Using OCA analyst can rapidly detect the project highlights along its critical path of the technology transfer project. At the end of the evaluation process, qualification of the project performance is performed using a coarse scale to measure the technology transfer capacity of the participant organizations. To prove the methodology proposed, we explore the economic and social impact results of some technology transfer projects developed by academic groups of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM, by its Spanish acronym). The conclusion is that in order to have a successful TTP, at least three conditions are necessary: (a) the project must be handled by an efficient technology transfer team (T3); (b) the technology transferred must be mature; and (c) the technology transferred must have economic and social impacts for the final organization or other users inside the receiver country.

Since the 19th century, Argentina has been characterized as an agro-exporting country reaching its peak after the First World War. Nowadays, in addition to exporting agricultural goods, Argentina has become a producer of an increasingly valuable raw material in the business world: scientific information. The accelerated increase in the production of scientific articles in high impact international journals makes Argentinean science visible all over the world. With the present study, we intend to unveil how Argentinean scientific information serves as building blocks of patents requested by foreign companies and institutions. According to the area of knowledge analyzed, we identify a differential flow of information towards the development of technologies in industrial countries. Moreover, we detected that the blind technology transfer phenomenon is a dynamic process. Herein, we present relevant evidence of scientific information flowing towards foreign technologies within 2 years after the article publication. These results suggest the need for the development of strict technology transfer policies in Argentinean universities and academic institutions in order to protect the state investment in science. Our findings highlight scientific production as a unique opportunity for economic growth and expansion of the country. This may become a fertile ground for political and economic debate.