Academic-Capital

Small and medium businesses have difficulty getting past a critical threshold that allows them to grow in the market. Helping them collaborate with like-minded businesses helps their growth potential. A paper by Dhakal, et. al. (2013) discusses an open-innovation concept of living labs that allows stakeholders and customers to engage in the co-creation process together. They studied a cluster in Australia to show how this enhances business development and the economic engine.   A living lab is a user-centered open innovation ecosystem (Hippel, 1986).   It uses modern technology to foster communication between stakeholders and customers to co-develop products.   The natural environment becomes the testing grounds for new products and services and this allows users to offer feedback on the success of changes and provide ideas on how to improve on the products and services.  It provides a collaborative space (virtual or physical) that distributes problem-solving tools, capacit

Chaos is a natural part of our lives and is prevalent in anything from weather patterns to economics. In order to understand the unpredictable nature of life and fluctuations in normal development through time Chaos Theory came into being. " Discoveries in quantum physics, biology, and chaos theory enable us to deal successfully with change and uncertainty in our organizations and our lives....the new science radically alters our understanding of the world, and it can teach us to live and work well together in these chaotic times " (Wheatley, 2009). Originally used in weather patterns and physics the theory has been applied to understanding and minimizing economic crisis. Before understanding the theory it is important to first have a grasp of the field of economics. " Economics, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science … mechanics of utility and self-interest "(Jevons, 1924). The very purpose of economic models is to predict, explain a