The themes of technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and organizing

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

Business Environment: The business environ­ment includes the external forces impinging upon the corporation. It includes the social, economic, political, technological, environmental, and mar­ket forces. It also includes the external dimensions of markets, stakeholders, and competition.

Clean Technology: Clean technology involves advanced technological designs that maximize the positive benefits and minimize the negative defects, burdens, and impacts. It includes sys­tems, processes, equipment and know-how that eliminates, reduces or controls pollution and waste streams better than alternates.

Construct: A construct is a theoretical frame­work or model used to analyze and determine strategies, systems, structures, and solutions. A construct is intended to be a representation of the dimensions and elements of business situations. It combines information, data and experience with theoretical thinking about how to view the business situation in light of its opportunities, challenges, and constraints.

Context: Context provides the basis for analy­sis, understanding and decision making. It includes the business environment and the management systems of the organization. Context is framed based on defining the scope of the analysis and the inclusion or exclusion of variables. The con­text includes both time and space considerations.

Extended Enterprise: The extended enter­prise includes the contributors to the solutions and recipients who use the solutions. It includes customers, stakeholders, supply networks, stra­tegic partners, related industries, competition, and infrastructure. It provides a framework for a descriptive, analytical, and structural under­standing of the needs, opportunities, challenges, requirements, specifications, and the strategies and action plans.

Globalization: The notion that the world economies are shifting toward a borderless eco­nomic structure, in which global corporations vie to satisfy customer demand on a global basis. Space and time are compressed and geography becomes less of a critical factor.

Preemptive Strategies: Preemptive strategies are intended to gain sustainable advantages by significantly improving the solutions, systems and structures. The focus is primarily on leading change and value creation.

Product Innovation: Product innovation includes the initiatives, methods, techniques, and processes for making incremental improvements to existing products and services. It involves mak­ing evolutionary changes to the products employ­ing the prevailing technologie s and organizational capabilities.

Radical Technological Innovation: Radi­cal technological innovation involves creating new-to-the-world technology that brings about revolutionary changes. It often creates new in­dustry or market structures or involves dramatic changes to the existing ones. It also involve mak­ing substantial changes to the existing strategic management system including developing new customers, new markets, new supply networks, and other related entities.

Sustainability: Sustainability implies that all human and business activities are carried out rates equal to or less than the Earth’s natural carrying capacity to renew the resources used and naturally mitigate the waste streams generated.

Sustainable Development: Sustainable devel­opment is a holistic management construct that includes the entire management business system from the origins ofthe raw materials to production processes and the customer applications and to the end-of-life solutions. Sustainable development involves making dramatic improves and positive changes to the full scope of relationships and linkages of the supply networks, customers and stakeholders, and support service providers for handling wastes, residuals and impacts.