1. Thomas MENKHOFF
Professor of Organisational Behaviour & Human Resources
SMU Lee Kong Chian School of Business

Co-project Investigator: Professor Udo Lindemann, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University Munich (TUM)

Project Title: Building Innovation Clusters for Competitive Advantage – The German Experience in Carbon Composites and Opportunities Ahead for Singapore

Overview:
Over the past decades, the concept of innovative knowledge clusters has emerged as a key driver of knowledge-driven economic growth. If managed well, regional or sectoral innovation cluster initiatives can bridge the gap between industry and scientific research; good ideas and insufficient commercialisation to create win-win collaborations for stakeholders. Conversely, poor planning and governance of these initiatives will lead to negative consequences such as a loss of competitive advantage.

Against this backdrop, the proposed project seeks to examine what makes successful innovation clusters tick by conducting a comparative study of selected emerging and successful clusters in Germany and Singapore with a focus on the carbon composites industry. It also aims to identify cross-cultural best practices for effective cluster management derived from the German case study with a view to address potential inhibitors of innovation in Singapore and beyond. Potential inhibitors can be insufficient value extraction, network dynamics, governance challenges related to technology commercialisation, poor ecosystem interconnections, and knowledge theft concerns.

Another objective of the project is to form a new community of interest by bringing together a group of experts from both countries to identify ways of strengthening local innovation clusters. Key network members will include the Technical University of Munich (TUM), TUM Asia (Singapore), SMU, Germany’s Leading-Edge Cluster initiative MAI Carbon/Carbon Composites e.V. (which is made up of 72 businesses, organisations, educational and research institutions from the Munich-Augsburg-Ingolstadt region), innovation consulting firm Inno-Focus, as well as multinationals and small and medium enterprises from both countries. The research findings will be shared via two international research workshops titled “Building Innovation Clusters for Competitive Advantage – Experiences in Germany and Challenges Ahead for Singapore”, which are slated to be held in TUM and LKCSB.
 

2. Ronald BLEDOW
Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour & Human Resources
SMU Lee Kong Chian School of Business

Co-project Investigator: Dr Jana Kühnel, Assistant Professor of Work and Organisational Psychology, University of Ulm, Institute of Psychology and Education

Project Title: Dynamics of Self-Regulation and Creativity at Work (DYNAVITY)

Overview:
Today’s dynamic and competitive economy places increasing demands on people’s ability to develop and implement new ideas. Generating an idea that is truly novel as well as useful, and transforming it into a practical solution is a long and difficult journey. It requires a wide spectrum of mental and behavioural processes such as unconstrained creativity, critical thinking, the drive to initiate action, and persistence in the face of difficulties. Past research has provided valuable insights into some of the mental processes underlying the development and implementation of new ideas. However, it is not well understood how people integrate and balance these processes over time.

The proposed project aims to advance this understanding and identify ways to improve people’s ability to generate and implement new ideas. It builds on the researchers’ published work on affective shifts, which has shown that changes in positive and negative emotions play an important role in how people transit between different mindsets that are critical for idea generation and implementation. The project will explore how personal factors, social-environmental factors and daily routines (e.g., sleep pattern) influence how people shift between different mindsets, and manage to generate and implement new ideas.

To address these questions, the researchers will conduct experience-sampling studies on students and full-time employees. By having participants respond to short surveys repeatedly over an extended period of time, experience-sampling studies enable the collection of data on the participants’ everyday experience and behaviour at work. Such data can be used to develop and test theories of the dynamic processes underlying creativity and innovation. Furthermore, the use of smartphones as data collection devices will allow the researchers to explore novel opportunities such as Global Positioning System (GPS) data on the participants’ movement patterns. 

Back to Research@SMU Issue 18 (Sep 2014)