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- Using metaheuristics-based methods to provide sustainable market solutions, suitable to consumer needsPublication . Santos, Ricardo; Abreu, António; Monteiro, JoaquimNowadays the buildings sector is one of the key sectors to achieve sustainability, with the correspondent consumers, in particular, the household consumers, having the need to perform sustainable choices every day, regarding the appliances to be acquired from the market. This is not only due to government’s growing concerns about sustainability but also with the consumers on having sustainable solutions, given the different economic, social (including their comfort) and environmental needs. However, the existence of several electrical appliances on market, with all their different issues, brands and models, together with the several tradeoffs referred before, difficult the consumer’s choices, on having sustainable solutions in the market. Therefore, this work, presents an approach, by using Multi-Attribute Value Theory (MAVT), integrated with metaheuristics, which uses Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) to provide suitable and sustainable market solutions to a consumer, according to its own needs. Based on the achieved solutions and considering the relative importance, given to each consumer, and regarding each dimension of sustainability, it’s possible to achieve several savings, namely electrical and water consumption, CO2 emissions, among others. A case study shall be shown, to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach.
- A soft computing framework to support consumers in obtaining sustainable appliances from the marketPublication . Santos, Ricardo; Abreu, António; Soares, José; Mendes, Fernanda; Calado, João Manuel FerreiraCurrently, sustainability is considered a priority by society, with the household appliances being one of the economic sectors involved in achieving sustainability. However, the existence of several issues (e.g., energy and water consumption, reliability, initial cost, and illuminance, among others) together with the diversity of brands and models on the market, make the consumer’s decisions regarding sustainable options difficult, according to their concerns and related to each sustainability dimension (economic, environmental, and social). By combining evolutionary algorithms (EA) with multicriteria techniques, it is possible to achieve sustainable solutions for the consumer based on their requirements. In this paper, a method is presented to support the consumer by obtaining a set of sustainable household appliances on the market that suit their preferences, concerns, and needs. By using a case study to apply the approach developed here, a set of sustainable appliances from the market is obtained, where several benefits are achieved (e.g., energy and water consumption savings, avoidance of CO2 emissions) during the lifecycle of each appliance, chosen from the appliance’s industry.
- A framework based on fuzzy logic to manage risk in an open innovation contextPublication . Santos, Ricardo; Abreu, António; Calado, João Manuel Ferreira; Soares, José Miguel; Martins, José Duarte MoleiroVirtual enterprises (VE), is well-known to make use of open innovation to achieve competitiveness, through innovation on product development. However, its limited resources, combined with the innovation resulted from the diversity of partners involved, rises some challenges to its management, specifically regarded with risk management. To fulfill these requirements, risk management's models, have been conceived to assist managers, on preventing threats with such risks, although without adequately incorporate the influence of each process domain on product development, as well as the subjectivity regarding human perception. In order to consider these issues, this work presents an approach, supported by fuzzy logic, to assess the risk's level on product development in an open innovation context. The model robustness, will be assessed through a case study, where it will be also discussed the benefits and challenges found.
- Integrating business, social, and environmental goals in open innovation through partner selectionPublication . Santos, Ricardo; Soares, José; Marques, Pedro; Navas, Helena; Moleiro Martins, JoséAlthough collaborative networks (CN) are widespread in academia and have come to be even more used in corporations all over the world, they still face several challenges on behalf of the new product development (NPD) context, especially in regard to the selection of the CN’s right partner. This becomes even more evident when it comes to promoting sustainable development goals within a CN’s activities, by selecting the right partners with a wide consensus from a CN’s management board, avoiding, therefore, the subjectivity around managers’ perception of a CN’s partner selection. Therefore, this work attempts to answer this problem, by presenting a soft-computing-based framework, to support the managers’ board on partner search and selection. The method presented here is further assessed by using a case study, based on the development of a green product, where, according to the obtained results, it is demonstrated that the proposed approach is extremely effective for partner selection, by assessing and prioritizing each candidate involved. The most suitable candidate that fulfills the CN’s requirements is then selected to be integrated as a future partner.
- Proposal of a holistic framework to support sustainability of new product innovation processesPublication . Dias, Ana; Abreu, António; Navas, Helena V. G.; Santos, RicardoThe survival of companies in globalized and highly competitive markets, heavily depends on their ability to innovate through the creation of new products and/or services, supported by sustainable processes to prevent business failure. There are many factors regarding the interface company/stakeholders/market at all hierarchical levels, which have a major contribution to sustain innovation in processes regarding the creation of new products and services. A holistic approach of all these factors, as a whole, has not been a subject of scientific research conducting to the necessity of creating a proposal of a framework that can be integrated and systemic. Thus, this paper aims to propose a functional holistic model, which integrates the strategic, organizational and operational levels regarding market business and company interaction, as well as the set of factors to take into account to guarantee assurance that innovative processes are sustained, when new products and/or services are created or improved. Conducted through an investigation of the state of the art, by literature review, a comprehensive and integrated conceptual model was built in a deductive-inductive way. Then, the conceptual model was validated through four case studies. Finally, it was found that the conceptual framework became functional, because its applicability has beensuccessfullytestedinabusinessenvironment. Asaresult,thetooldevelopedhere,canbeuseful to measure and evaluate projects dedicated to companies that innovate in a sustainable way.
- Assessing the relationship between market orientation and green product innovation: the intervening role of green self-efficacy and moderating role of resource bricolagePublication . Akhtar, Shamim; Martins, José Moleiro; Mata, Pedro Neves; Tian, Hongyun; Naz, Shumaila; Damaso, Maria; Santos, RicardoEnvironmental issues have gradually gained attention in the last decade because of increased global warming and high waste production. Therefore, this article aims to add value to the environment management research by analyzing green product innovation through market orientation. Moreover, this study includes green self-efficacy as a mediator, being less focused in the past literature to examine employees' confidence in innovating green products according to customers' needs. In addition, resource bricolage is also introduced as a moderator because fewer studies display the empirical results about organizations producing or tend to produce innovated green products with a limited number of resources. Data were collected from 477 employees of small and medium-sized enterprises using a self-administered questionnaire in Pakistan. Empirical results revealed by SmartPLS software delineate that market orientation has a positive and significant impact on green self-efficacy and green product innovation. Moreover, green self-efficacy shows a significant mediation impact between market orientation and green product innovation. Additionally, resource bricolage also moderates the relationship between market orientation and green product innovation. Overall, the study contributes to theoretical and practical knowledge about green product innovation in tackling the world's environmental issues.
- A framework for risk assessment in collaborative networks to promote sustainable systems in innovation ecosystemsPublication . Santos, Ricardo; Abreu, António; Dias, Ana; Calado, João Manuel Ferreira; Anes, Vitor; Soares, JoséNowadays—and due to an increasingly competitive world—organizations need to collaborate in an open innovation context to be e_cient and e_ective by achieving high levels of innovation with their products and services. However, the existing resources—as well as the innovation achieved from the diversity of partners involved—brings challenges to the management; in particularly with risk management. To fulfill such needs, risk management frameworks have been created to support managers, on preventing threats with systems development, although without properly account the influence of each system component, on the entire system, as well as the subjectivity within human perception. To account for these issues, a framework supported by fuzzy logic is presented in this work, to evaluate the risk level on system development in open innovation environment. The approach robustness is assessed by using a case study, where the challenges and benefits found are discussed.
- A new risk assessment approach for agile projectsPublication . Anes, Vitor; Abreu, António; Santos, RicardoAgile is a successful project management mindset developed by the software industry which recently has been extrapolated for other industries. This mindset has been promoting the use and development of several tools that aim to minimize risks associated to the project output, i.e., in Agile the user requirements are the major priority and the risk associated to these requirements is strongly mitigated using tools like Scrum or Kanban. However, risk analysis in Agile projects has an implicit nature without well-defined and systematic methods. This feature was inherited from the software industry where this implicit approach works well, but for industries diferente from those that develop software it creates serious drawbacks. In fact, the risk associated to the project itself, or in other words, the risk associated to the Agile team capability to implement and manage a given project is not explicitly analyzed in Agile methods. Moreover, the Agile risk mitigation approach do not consider this important point of view in risk management. In this sense, important risk factors have been omitted, risk factors such as scope creep, unrealistic expectations, lack of cooperation, or lack of communication are some of these factors that have been overlooked despite their strong impact on Agile projects. This paper proposes a new approach to perform risk assessment and management of Agile projects. The approach comprises a set of qualitative risk tools inline with the Agile way of doing things, i.e., the proposed model does not jeopardize the flexibility found in Agile methods so appreciated by Agile team members, but at the same time, the proposed model introduces a systematic way of risk analysis which absence in Agile projects has been criticize in literature.