Göran Roos

Evaluating an Australian public policy organization's innovation capacity

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide explicit thinking about the organizational elements that support or hinder innovation in the government sector as it increasingly faces demand for innovative solutions to policy areas. The paper aims to present the development and findings of an evaluative case method conducted for an Australian state government departments organizational innovation program.Design/methodology/approach – The evaluative case study was developed and conducted in two phases. First, an intellectual capital conceptual framework was applied to four independently sourced and discreet case organizations to represent multiple exemplars of innovation capacity building. These exemplars were suspended from their context in order to identify essential elements of the innovation capacity development process which in turn were then applied in phase two to the Department of Treasury and Finance (DTF), a Victorian (Australia) public policy organization.Findings – The case raises critical d...

Government policy implications of intellectual capital: an Australian manufacturing case study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on an industry policy implementation case involving around 30 manufacturing firms, where the intellectual capital (IC) lens, and especially the intellectual capital navigator (ICN) approach, was found to be very useful for evaluating alternative servitisation strategies. Servitisation is a form of business model innovation and as such involves restructuring the firm’s resource deployment system including its IC resources. Design/methodology/approach – The ICN was one of several methods and themes used by a sample of manufacturing firms during a 12 month period. Data capture were through video filming, observation, and formal interviewing during and after the interventions. Findings – The ICN is considered to be the third most valuable theme in a strategic and operational servitisation programme for manufacturing firms, primarily in the domain of effectiveness evaluation of alternative resource deployment strategies and as such should be one of the key dimen...

An empirical analysis of the IC Navigator approach in practice – a case study of five manufacturing firms

The literature surrounding Intellectual Capital (IC) theory has grown substantially over the last 10 years with new models, frameworks and approaches introduced for how to manage IC. Yet, the practical implication of deploying IC methods in an organisation and its impact on a firms business model innovation and decision-making process is relatively unexplored. This paper will review one tool, the IC Navigator approach and its effectiveness as a tool for resource deployment analysis and its impact on a firms future value creation activities. The paper reports on research that involved five manufacturing firms who participated in an action learning workshop series and particularly the workshop dedicated to using the IC Navigator approach. The usefulness of this model as a tool to reconfiguring a firms resources, as perceived by the five firms, is examined and findings are presented.

The intellectual capital needs of a transitioning economy: a case study exploration of Australian sectoral changes

Purpose – Developed economies with high-cost environments face industrial transitions from scale-based manufacturing (MAN) to knowledge, technology and intangible asset-based sectors. The purpose of this paper is to examine the changes in employment and value-adding profiles of transitioning industry sectors in Australia and discuss the implications for policy that influences the intellectual capital (IC) profile of industrial sectors in transition. Design/methodology/approach – The approach borrowed concepts from the firm-level strategic management literature and applied them to a macro level of industry analysis. In this paper the authors examine the transitions in the Australian economy which, due to a rising cost base, is experiencing a decline in its value chain-oriented MAN sector. The authors contrast four industry sectors with the MAN sector and examine the different value creation models. Findings – The findings clearly show how the contribution to employment and value added (termed Economic Valu...

Harnessing Marine Macroalgae for Industrial Purposes in an Australian Context: Emerging Research and Opportunities

In today’s environmental and economic climate, it is important for businesses to drive development towards sustainable and zero-waste industries, responsibly leveraging renewable low-cost inputs to generate high-value outputs for the global market. Marine macroalgae presents modern businesses with opportunities for the development of a new and vibrant industry sector that largely ful lls these requirements.