Borut Likar

INCREASING THE CAPACITY OF COMPANIES TO ABSORB INVENTIONS FROM RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS AND ENCOURAGING PEOPLE TO INNOVATE 1

ABSTRACT Europe lacks competitiveness due to lack of innovation. Reasons include a lack of transfer of knowledge from research organizations to businesses European Union (EU) suggests a new approach. We find it lacks holism, although EU requires systems thinking in other documents. We suggest a dialectical system of viewpoints to make the approach requisitely holistic. Liaison offices, university-industry consortia, professional unions, and alumni associations are the four organizational forms which the EU suggests. This suggestion leaves out the issues of values, cultures, ethics, and norms. It also forgets how long periods of time have been necessary and how much time will be needed for an innovative and requisitely holistic change to occur. The feeling of interdependence, i.e., mutual need for each other, is a precondition which requires the practice of a systems approach. The government acting as a big buyer in the modern buyers market might be one way toward a solution, although not a simple one: It requires the government people to change themselves. Education of young people and their mentors for innovating may also help.

Implementation of a Multidisciplinary Professional Skills Course at an Electrical Engineering School

This paper describes a case study of an innovative approach to teaching at an engineering school. The postgraduate course Project Work and Communication in Research and Development (R&D) was developed at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia. The main aim of the course was to make the entry of young engineering graduates into the business environment as easy as possible. Currently, engineers are facing more and more interdisciplinarity and project work in their daily assignments. The course was designed to remedy any deficiencies in the multidisciplinary professional skills and knowledge of the graduate-level students, and it covered the topics of innovation management, communication in R&D, project management, and problem solving in teams. An end-of-course survey showed positive feedback from participating students. The empirical data (enrollment ratio of students, session attendance ratio, and average student grade) proves that the course met its goal of honing the professional skills of postgraduate engineering students.

Innovation investment and economic performance in transition economies: Evidence from Slovenia

Abstract This research investigates the relationship between innovation expenditure and its economic performance in 2503 companies. The findings show higher innovation expenditure productivity in the group of Leaders; each euro invested in innovation yields EUR 13.90, but just EUR 7.70 in the group of Followers. ROE is 40% higher in Leaders. Recommendations are provided as to the improvement of business processes and results: financial investments in innovation should be increased in Followers, while simultaneously a substantial improvement in the efficiency of exploiting existing assets is essential. Companies should increase their expenditure on extramural R&D, acquisition of external knowledge (concept of open innovation model) and market introduction of innovations. Further on, we compared some financial data on Slovenian companies with EU average data. The results clearly indicate that Slovenian innovation expenditures are relatively high but not being applied optimally to achieve economic results that compare to the EU average.

The development of a performance measurement methodology for idea management

The paper discusses the development of a performance measurement methodology for Idea Management (IM), i.e., a system that supports nonprofessional innovation as a way to the continuous improvement of organisations. For this purpose, a system of indicators, each of them determining a single essential aspect of IM operational performance, and a composite indicator as an overall performance measure are proposed. An empirical analysis links the input (i.e., directly controllable) parameters of IM with the output (indirectly controllable) parameters. A pilot study based on the proposed methodology has shown that the simultaneous, well-balanced development of all input parameters leads to a substantially higher IM performance than putting emphasis on single parameters only. Furthermore, the application of the appropriate control measures to the directly controllable parameters may lead to essentially higher results in the output.

Systemic approach for innovative education process

Purpose – The main objective was to establish which are the most important phases within the invention‐innovation processes in Slovenian vocational education and training. We focused on the most important “outcome” of the educational process – the innovative student and tried to establish his/her interdependence with the teacher, educational system and supporting environment.Design/methodology/approach – We used questioner for analyses of the current situation on performing the mentioned chain and influencing factors. We used descriptive statistics and correlations among variables (Pearson correlation coefficient). The study was conducted among secondary school teachers.Findings – The results show that teachers are aware of the importance of innovative processes. But the level of their non‐optimal support depends on their knowledge, experience and motivation as well as the school system at micro level. On macro level, the local community, regional and national support are the influencing factors. Concerni...

Factors of successful innovation in services

The objective of the research was to identify innovation factors influencing the performance of service companies. The study encompassed 87 Slovenian companies. The statistical analysis was performed in three phases. The first phase encompassed a principal component analysis, during which five potentially influential input and two output innovation factors were extracted. The second phase consisted of descriptive statistics, thus providing insights into the state of innovativeness in the service sector. Regression analysis followed in the final phase. The results of regression analysis identified the factor of innovation and market policy and the factor comparison with competition as influential on the average total benefit of the company from innovations. Interestingly, both factors reveal an innovation ‘follower’ pattern in services, thus indicating that stronger company’s own incentives may be required for a breakthrough innovation.

Innovation society – the role of the secondary school

The present paper analyses the Slovenian praxis in encouraging innovation among the secondary school pupils. The research presents the status of enterprising and innovation fostering in Slovenia and compares it to the models well-established in some European and other countries. The aim of the research is to advise a model for raising innovation among youth. Introduction of education programmes for developing entrepreneurial drive and innovation in secondary schools would provide systematic and organised development of innovation potential of young people. An innovative youth would contribute to a raise in innovativeness and competitiveness of the economy.

Predicting Exploitations of Information Systems Vulnerabilities Through Attackers’ Characteristics

The main goal of proactive security is to prevent attacks before they happen. In modern information systems it largely depends on the vulnerability management process, where prioritization is one of the key steps. A widely used prioritization policy based only upon a common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) score is frequently criticised for bad effectiveness. The main reason is that the CVSS score alone is not a good predictor of vulnerability exploitation in the wild. Therefore, the aim of the research in this field is to determine in what way we can improve our prediction abilities. Clearly, software vulnerabilities are commodities used by attackers. Hence, it makes sense considering their characteristics in vulnerability prioritization. In contrast, one should be able to measure and compare the effectiveness of various policies. Therefore, an important goal of this paper was to develop an evaluation model, which would allow such comparisons. For this purpose, we developed an agent-based simulation model which measures the exposure of information system to exploitable vulnerabilities. Besides, some policies which take into account human threats were defined and then compared with the most popular existing methods. Experimental results imply that the proposed policy, which is based on CVSS vectors and attacker characteristics, achieves the highest effectiveness among existing methods.

Driving Information Systems Security through Innovations: First Indications

Modern organizations and even nations are increasingly dependent on information systems (IS) security, and their economic prosperity is strongly linked to innovation. Do these two important issues also relate one to another, and how? Can some lessons be learned that are important not only to security professionals but also to organizational and other important systems managing decision makers? Assuming that the answer is yes, how can we deploy innovation techniques to further improve IS security? Because this interdisciplinary area has not been addressed so far, this article presents one of the first attempts to address it on the basis of statistically relevant data on a national and international scale. It provides experimental results that imply some important statistical interdependencies that call for further study and also identifies systemic limitations, including those that exist on the European Union scale, that should be addressed to enable progress in this area.

A METHODOLOGY FOR PROVISION OF SUSTAINABLE INFORMATION SYSTEMS SECURITY

Information represents one of the most important factors in the success of any enterprise today. Moreover, confidential information is becoming increasingly integrated into complex info-innovation solutions and is accordingly exposed to novel means of manipulation and theft. The legal requirements concerning information security (IS) policies in organizations are mainly based on reactive approaches that follow the standards applied in this area and are regularly updated every few years. However, a complementary approach that takes into account a fast-changing information/innovation security threats landscape and that is of proactive nature is required. Such an approach is presented in this article by linking the information security field with the field of innovation management.