Abstract:The purpose of this study is to examine how the collaboration structure among inventors in an R and D organization affects its capability to create impactful innovations. Specifically, this study is focused on examining whether a certain type of network mechanism found in collaboration among inventors contributes more to enhancing the future impacts of collaboration outputs, which is represented by the forward citations of their patents. To this end, co-invention networks for R and D organizations are constructed from an inventor-patent database, and the three structural patterns are measured by using network analytic constructs, namely, structural holes, strength of ties, and centralization. The results show that the presence of structural holes and strong ties are positively associated with the increasing forward citations, and that decentralized collaboration has also a positive impact. The findings offer support for both structural hole and network closure perspectives on social capital, which have been considered contradictive in the literature.

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Energy Storage Systems (ESSs) have recently been highlighted because of their many benefits such as load-shifting, frequency regulation, price arbitrage, renewables, and so on. Among those benefits, we aim at evaluating their economic value in frequency regulation application. However, unlike previous literature focusing on profits obtained from participating in the ancillary service market, our approach concentrates on the cost reduction from the perspective of a utility firm that has an obligation to pay energy fees to a power exchange. More specifically, we focus on the payments between the power exchange market and the utility firm as a major source of economic benefits. The evaluation is done by costbenefit analysis (CBA) with a dataset of the Korean market while considering operational constraint costs as well as scheduled energy payments, and a simulation algorithm for the evaluation is provided. Our results show the potential for huge profits to be made by cost reduction. We believe that this research can provide a guideline for a utility firm considering investing in ESSs for frequency regulation application as a source of cost reduction. OPEN ACCESSEnergies 2015, 8 5001

We have considered the customization of monitoring services in Workflow Management System (WFMS). WFMS is a software tool to manage business processes effectively and efficiently. An important function of WFMS is monitoring, and WFMS usually involves many monitoring users having different responsibilities, roles, and preferences. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework of customization for workflow monitoring that can produce a monitoring environment fitted to each user’s requirements. We have identified four components in customizing the workflow monitoring: data objects, analysis methods, presentation styles, and audit events. We have also developed a customization model, called monitoring template, to combine the components. A participant can specify each of the components on a template based on the participant’s own preference, which will then be used to provide workflow monitoring services that are automatically customized for the user. A prototype system has been implemented on top of a commercial WFMS to demonstrate the effectiveness of the customizable workflow monitoring.

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