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This article presents practical guidelines for the design of interactive software for children with autism. Many existing software design techniques rely on social interaction and so are not appropriate for this group, and little practical guidance is available. The guidelines presented are based on research experiences during the development of an interactive software game called TouchStory, which was designed to promote an understanding of narrative structure while adapting to the learning needs of individual children with autism. Our results indicate that some children with autism were actively engaged in self‐directed, curiosity‐driven learning, and found TouchStory enjoyable, even after repeated exposures on as many as 20 occasions. The guidelines are not limited to the appearance and behaviour of the software system, and may be fundamental to the research questions asked and the approach adopted. They provide a useful basis for furthering our understanding of the provision of assistive technology for children with autism.

Raises questions about the research degree examination and in particular the apparent reluctance on the part of institutions and both regulatory and funding agencies to develop a common and transparent approach. Research degree examining is discussed as a quality issue in which the absence of norms adopted for taught programmes is questioned. What results is a confusing and muddled picture of assessment of the highest award of UK universities. The editorial reviews issues arising from candidates’ perceptions of the process of examination, including the viva, prior to the event, the choice of examiners and the approach adopted by the examiners. Examining the criteria employed in the examination and the approach taken, the paper highlights the enormous diversity of practice. The resulting discussion highlights the need for national guidelines and points to the lack of clear direction in the recent joint funding councils’ report.

In this chapter, we examine the development of a technology path in the nanotube (NT) field – one of the most well-developed areas of nanotechnology. Although early developments suggested that there were equally viable pathways related to the development of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and others made with organic molecules and polymers, carbon-based technologies became valorized. We show how the carbon science path developed and try to unpack how it happened. We argue that it was not due to the inherent efficiency or applications of CNTs, but to sociopolitical dynamics. Even though much intellectual property research focuses on patent-level analysis, we underscore the importance of patent categories as key cognitive elements that organize the different knowledge domains within the world of NT patenting. We show that interlinkages between patent categories are crucial to the formation and development of a particular technology path. In unpacking the selection of the carbon science path, we highlight the key role played by a cadre of star scientists and the political neglect of alternative pathways as the field herded toward the CNT path.

A firm's behavior is constrained by its access to resources owned or controlled by different constituencies in its environment. Mergers and acquisitions are one way to proactively manage these resource dependencies. Research on resource dependence reducing merger and acquisition patterns provides an important cornerstone of resource dependency theory and a basis of our present knowledge of the aggregate industry-level merger and acquisition patterns. However, due to the predominant focus on inter-industry merger and acquisition patterns in earlier research, much less is known as to whether the same logic could also be applied to explain intra-industry merger and acquisition patterns. In this chapter, we extend the resource dependence results to an intra-industry context. In particular, we show that mergers and acquisitions among pharmaceutical firms tend to take place among firms with technological and competitive interdependencies. To distinguish our finding from the competing resource scale and scope explanations, we show that the likelihood of a resource dependence reducing acquisition is moderated by the crowding of firms’ technological positions and prior alliance ties. Consistent with the resource dependence explanation, both weaken the effect of overlapping technological positions even though both alliance ties and crowding otherwise are positively related to merger and acquisition patterns in line with the social structural explanations.

Marketing can be defined as ‘the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably. The most profitable new markets are developed from the recognition of a need which is not being satisfied’. For industrial and commercial property, several discrete stages can be identified in the long‐term process of marketing. In this paper, these stages will be used to outline a marketing strategy for enterprise zones, based on a continuing study of the Swansea Enterprise Zone. It is readily acknowledged that the approach has been adapted from the views of E. S. Cleavely found in his leading text — ‘The Marketing of Industrial and Commercial Property’.

We extend the literature on scientific discovery and commercialization by examining entrepreneurial action by university-based scientists. Specifically, we investigate the decision process and the paths to commercialize academic technologies. University-based technology transfer involves multiple stakeholders with competing interests; hence, we believe researchers should apply a multilevel theoretical lens, which starts with the disclosure of discoveries made by scientists in their labs. We build a multilevel framework that views the scientists’ choice to first disclose viable discoveries to pursue entrepreneurial action as a function of three factors: (i) a scientist's rent orientation, (ii) a university's rent doctrine, and (iii) the rent doctrine of the scientific field in which the scientist conducts research. We suggest that commercial disclosure most often occurs when there is alignment between these three factors. Lastly, we advance an agenda for future empirical research by developing specific propositions about the key constructs and relationships concerning university-based entrepreneurial action.

Networks connecting two important supporting institutions – law firms and venture capital partnerships – explain regions’ disparate abilities to sustain diverse high-technology ventures. In order to explain the diversity of entrepreneurial activity in a region, we distinguish between institutional capacity (the number of law firms and venture capitalists in a locale), strong interinstitutional connections that span legal and financial domains, and cohesive structural communities of directly and indirectly connected supporting organizations. We argue that strong connections and cohesive communities are essential, but little examined contributors to the development of diverse research-based economies. We find support for the argument in an empirical analysis of initial public offerings (IPOs) by U.S. high-technology companies in five industries between 1993 and 2005. Linking regional outcomes to strong ties that span local legal and financial institutions and to cohesive structures that weld them into communities offers new insights for research on the institutional and network underpinnings of entrepreneurship and regional economic development.

Network structures are critical in the acquisition of resources; however, their impact on innovative performance remains unclear, especially in an uncertain environment. This study aims to advance research on network research by investigating how the configuration of the industrial environment shapes the relationship between network structures of a new venture and its innovative performance.

Empirical support was derived from entrepreneurial survey data. Data were collected through a survey of 1,510 new ventures in Taiwan for this research study.

The authors find that innovative performance is impacted by different aspects of the network structure, and that environmental uncertainty contributes to this impact. Overall, the authors find that network structure, innovative performance and environmental uncertainty together contribute to a contingent view of the conditions under which network boundary conditions impact innovative performance.

Given the contradictory role of network centrality and the cooperative network on innovativeness, managers need to focus on acquiring a critical position in the industrial network rather than expecting to obtain resources and information from strong relationships with cooperators, especially in an uncertain environment.

This research contributes to network theory in two ways. First, it provides descriptive data on different aspects of the network structure and how these aspects impact innovative performance. Second, it sheds light on the configuration of resources and allocations for new ventures, which must compete with rivals in an uncertain environment.

This paper reports the findings of a small survey of the views of individual academics in relation to four issues regarding research degree examiners: the use of their reports; the scope of criteria they use to make judgements and the assessment remit given to them; their training; and the criteria used for their appointment. The responses indicate lack of consensus on almost all points and suggest some fundamental differences of view on the nature of research degree study, its subsequent examination and on the roles of examiners within the assessment process.

Reports on discussions that took place at a series of specialist seminars and workshops on research degree examining organised by the UK Council for Graduate Education during 2000/2001 at various venues in the UK. Debates the processes and procedures of research degree examination in the UK in terms of variations in practice that exist along with principles that signal a common identity. Takes account of the effects of developments in, for example, professional doctorates and the PhD by published work and on perceptions of the “traditional” examination. Issues addressed include: the composition of PhD examining panels and the roles of individual examiners; the training and qualification of examiners; the purpose and nature of the oral examination; the tension between examination of the process of training and that of the “finished product” (which the thesis may be seen to represent). Argues for the need for more transparency about examination processes, for challenge to common assumptions and for a refocusing on research degree examination as a process of assessment.