Tomi Heimonen

What are the factors that affect innovation in growing SMEs

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on a study aimed at identifying factors that affect the innovativeness of growing small and medium‐sized firms (SMEs). It aims to use intellectual property rights (IPRs) as a proxy for innovations. The IPRs to be used include patents, trademarks, utility models and registered designs.Design/methodology/approach – A theoretical model was developed and tested on longitudinal sample data representing 348 continuously growing SMEs located in two diverse regions in Finland. The firms in the sample represented various industries. Logistic regression analysis was used to analyse the data.Findings – About 8 per cent of the firms in the sample could be defined as innovative growth SMEs. Most of these firms operate in the service and manufacturing sectors. They are small businesses that employ ten to 49 people and are between five and 19 years old. Innovative firms in this class were found to be less likely successful in the short‐term than their non‐innovative count...

Off-the-shelf assessment of information ergonomics

Maintaining performance in ubiquitous work environments is increasingly dependent on the quality of physical, cognitive and organizational ergonomics of work. Since most knowledge workers operate in digital work environments, there is a need to elaborate the study of work ergonomics particularly with respect to information ergonomics in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). The paper introduces the concept of information ergonomics (IE) and operationalizes it by specifying measures to use in studying knowledge work in the field. The empirical data were gathered from 35 participants, including application log data of PC use and heart rate variability data. Based on the empirical findings, the paper also reflects theoretical propositions for the development of IE research. The study contributes to the methodological development of IE research by operationalizing and validating measurement of IE and presents a practical assessment method.

A creative prototype illustrating the ambient user experience of an intelligent future factory

This article introduces user experience research that has been carried out by evaluating a video-illustrated science fiction prototype with process control workers. Essentially, the prototype ‘A remote operator’s day in a future control center in 2025’ was aimed at discovering opportunities for new interaction methods and ambient intelligence for the factories of the future. The theoretical objective was to carry out experience design research, which was based on explicit ambient user experience goals in the nominated industrial work context. This article describes the complete creative prototyping process, starting from the initial user research that included evaluations of current work practices, technological trend studies and co-design workshops, and concluding with user research that assessed the final design outcome, the science fiction prototype. The main contribution of the article is on the ambient user experience goals, the creation process of the video-illustrated science fiction prototype, and on the reflection of how the experience-driven prototype was evaluated in two research setups: as video sequences embedded in a Web survey, and as interviews carried out with expert process control workers. For the science fiction prototyping process, the contribution demonstrates how the method may employ video-illustration as a means for future-oriented user experience research, and how complementary user-centered methods may be used to validate the results.

Characteristics of successful gazelles - problems in approaches and methods of analysing the data

This paper focuses on the problems of analysing growth and success of a firm. The data consists of 348 growing SMEs. 75 of them were growing rapidly and highly successful (HGS). The methods include discriminant, regression and logistic regression analysis. In regression models, growth and success seem to be inversely related. Regression analysis is not an appropriate way to analyse HGS firms. Logistic regression and discriminant analysis should consider a priori probabilities to produce reliable results. The use of different methods depends on the design of the study, the characteristics of the data and the validity of the research questions. A robust analysis presupposes refinement of the data, accurate model specification, and competent interpretation of the results. Future research should focus on periods longer than 3-5 years and take into account uncertainty and discontinuity of variables. A qualitative approach where behavioural and management issues will be included is needed.

The development of high growth and highly successful SMEs: cases from Eastern Finland

The study analyses the development of high growth and highly successful (HGS) Finnish firms before and after their HGS period. What factors affect growth and success of the firms? How do these firms contribute to job creation? After some critical events, the firms followed focused strategy and concentrated on core activities. In HGS, firm growth and profitability fluctuates parallel directions. Firms had quadrupled their employees in ten years. Family business and venture capital backed university spin-off categories were identified to have slightly different approaches in their development. Strategic changes and focused strategies were found to be drivers for success.

Developing innovation support services for small high-growth technology firms in Eastern Finland

This study examines innovation support service requirements of small, high-growth firms in Eastern Finland. The results show that most rapidly growing firms in the region can be defined as small, knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) providers. In order to create and commercialise innovation these firms use various innovation support services (most frequently technology-related and internationalisation-related services). The results also show that there is a concrete need for intermediary organisations that help small technology firms to choose appropriate innovation support services and generally act as external strategic partners during the commercialisation of innovation process. Providing convenient access to suitable ‘brokers’ may thus enhance the contributions innovation support services can make to the development of small, high-growth technology firms.

Identifying User Interaction Patterns in E-Textbooks.

We introduce a new architecture for e-textbooks which contains two navigational aids: an index and a concept map. We report results from an evaluation in a university setting with 99 students. The interaction sequences of the users were captured during the user study. We found several clusters of user interaction types in our data. Three separate user types were identified based on the interaction sequences: passive user, term clicker, and concept map user. We also discovered that with the concept map interface users started to interact with the application significantly sooner than with the index interface. Overall, our findings suggest that analysis of interaction patterns allows deeper insights into the use of e-textbooks than is afforded by summative evaluation.

Accessible speech-based and multimodal media center interface for users with physical disabilities

We present a multimodal media center user interface with a hands-free speech recognition input method for users with physical disabilities. In addition to speech input, the application features a zoomable context + focus graphical user interface and several other modalities, including speech output, haptic feedback, and gesture input. These features have been developed in co-operation with representatives from the target user groups. In this article, we focus on the speech input interface and its evaluations. We discuss the user interface design and results from a long-term pilot study taking place in homes of physically disabled users, and compare the results to a public pilot study and laboratory studies carried out with non-disabled users.