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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the development of the final outputs of a research project looking at partnerships between technology‐based start‐ups and large firms (“asymmetric” partnerships). It presents the stage of the research aimed at understanding how best to design outputs to assist firms in managing such partnerships.

A combination of company case studies, company workshops, an end‐user survey and pilot dissemination programme were used to identify an appropriate form for the packaging and delivery of the research findings (i.e. what problems can be encountered in such partnerships, and what approaches companies have implemented to overcome these problems).

A range of approaches for overcoming the problems of managing partnerships between firms whose age and size are markedly different were catalogued. The research presented in this paper revealed that companies felt best able to learn from the experiences of others through a combination of direct support, multi‐company workshops, and online access to selected materials.

The generalisability of the findings may be limited by the fact that the majority of the organisations collaborating in this research either were located in the high‐technology business cluster in and around the city of Cambridge, UK or had formed partnerships with companies in this geographic region.

Partnerships between technology‐based start‐ups and technology‐intensive large firms can provide an effective means of accessing and integrating the complementary assets required to bring a novel technology to market. This research will help firms overcome the numerous challenges involved in setting up and managing such partnerships by providing stakeholders with easier access to academic research findings. It will assist researchers who are considering how to disseminate research outputs to industry.

There is a strong body of work on improving the performance of partnerships in general, but less on overcoming the practical challenges of managing partnerships between firms of markedly different age and scale. In addition, the selection of the optimum process for ensuring that the findings of such research are used to support implementation remains a topic of debate. This work helps to address both gaps.

Range of room temperature curing fluororesins. A new range of soluble, room temperature curing fluororesins for use in high performance coating has recently been launched by ICI Mond Division. Sold under the tradename ‘Lumiflon’ these resins form coatings which are extremely resistant to weathering and aggressive environments and retain their original appearance over a long period with an expected life of more than 20 years.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how supply and demand interact during industrial emergence.

The paper builds on previous theorising about co-evolutionary dynamics, exploring the interaction between supply and demand in a study of the industrial emergence of the commercial inkjet cluster in Cambridge, UK. Data are collected through 13 interviews with professionals working in the industry.

The paper shows that as new industries emerge, asynchronies between technology supply and market demand create opportunities for entrepreneurial activity. In attempting to match innovative technologies to particular applications, entrepreneurs adapt to the system conditions and shape the environment to their own advantage. Firms that successfully operate in emerging industries demonstrate the functionality of new technologies, reducing uncertainty and increasing customer receptiveness.

The research is geographically bounded to the Cambridge commercial inkjet cluster. Further studies could consider commercial inkjet from a global perspective or test the applicability of the findings in other industries.

Technology-based firms are often innovating during periods of industrial emergence. The insights developed in this paper help such firms recognise the emerging context in which they operate and the challenges that need to overcome.

As an in depth study of a single industry, this research responds to calls for studies into industrial emergence, providing insights into how supply and demand interact during this phase of the industry lifecycle.

Patient process recognition and re‐engineering (PPR) has become a major concern of recent health care development and management. This paper discusses the position of the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK; where it is at present and where it aims to be. It suggests that the work of the current government in developing community care is central to the work of both the Leicester Royal Infirmary and the Peterborough Hospitals NHS Trust, when building relationships between primary (community) and secondary (hospital) health care provision. This paper aims to examine whether and how PPR can improve patient processes in the NHS. It does this through a case study of PPR in Peterborough Hospital.

The creation of well‐designed products is widely acknowledged as an important contributor to company success. In principle, an effective design process, as part of the wider new product development (NPD) process, should result in well‐designed products. This paper aims to present a tool to enable a design team to evaluate their design process in a workshop setting, with a view to targeting improvements.

This tool is based on literature and has been iteratively developed using a mixed research approach, including detailed exploratory cases and application in action research mode.

The resulting tool comprises two main components. A “process audit” based on process maturity principles, which targets the design‐related activities in NPD. The process audit enables a company team to identify improvement opportunities in the design process. A product audit enables perceptions towards product characteristics to be assessed. The audit tool does not seek to be a benchmarking tool, but aims to capture “good design” principles in a form which is accessible and useful to practitioners.

In use, the tool enabled managers to balance their concern with meeting budget and timescale demands against the importance of producing well‐designed products. By first focusing on the tangible output of the design process – the product – practitioners are better able to understand the way in which design decisions influence product usability, desirability and producibility. Evidence from cases confirms the value and originality of this tool.

Previous tools addressing product development have focused on strategic and managerial concerns. This novel assessment tool focuses explicitly on design issues, within the wider context of NPD.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and discuss a definition and a classification scheme for direct writing (DW) technologies.

Both the definition and the classification are developed based on the perspectives of the growing DW community in the UK, through consultation with members, workshops and a survey across the community. In addition, current DW technologies and literature on classification techniques are reviewed.

The classification is structured in order to encompass current technologies, but also to be expandable to accommodate new ones that could be identified in the future as belonging to the DW remit. It is developed considering three dimensions related to DW: “Technology” to encompass all the processes, apparatuses, principles and tools which allow DW manufacturing; “Applications” to consider all the “types of manufactured goods” which could be produced with the DW technologies; and “Materials” which could be employed in DW manufacturing. The classification scheme is visualised into navigation maps and used as the basis of a software tool which can allow the community to exchange information on DW.

The paper proposes a classification as a tool for knowledge exchange and to support knowledge organisation and retrieval. However, the classification proposed in this paper might not be the only possible solution.

The definitional framework is proposed to the DW community as a language tool to help communication among members with different perspectives and to be used to support the creation of information databases. It is embodied in a software tool through which they could file personal profiles (i.e. their expertise and interests) and hence map the community.

It is evident that, due to the heterogeneity of the community of scientists and practitioners interested in these technologies, many perspectives coexisted and that a communication platform is required. The authors decide to develop a classification which could be flexible enough to encompass new emerging technologies as the use of classifications as tools for supporting communication across the scientific community is well known and as the authors could not identify in literature any other DW technology classification which could satisfy these requirements.

This paper is about advanced library information systems in Russia. The urgent need is obvious in Russia for library systems based on open standards and Internet technology, and for integrating library systems in common library information space. The Regional University and Science Library Advanced Network in the north‐west of Russia (RUSLANet) Project is an initiative of St Petersburg State Technical University, aimed at joining the collections of university libraries and providing access to them via the Internet. The paper discusses briefly the concept of the RUSLANet Project, ways of implementing it, its position today, and plans for the near future.

WE HAVE reviewed books on networking, that in many people's opinion was a vision of the distant future. Now it is coming closer, indeed it can be said to be here.

Presents the results of a survey of 52 UK‐based manufacturing companies to analyse the supply chain problems faced by the companies in relation to serving European markets. On the basis of the research a typology of supply chains has been developed and firms classified accordingly. Results show that, to the majority of companies, basic operational issues are of paramount importance and few are giving consideration to the broader strategic issues of European supply chain management.