Daniel Baier Livres

It is a great privilege to write a foreword for a book honoring Wolfgang Gaul on his sixtieth birthday. Currently a Professor of Business Administration and Management Science and Head of the Institute of Decision Theory and Management Science at the University of Karlsruhe (TH), Germany, Wolfgang Gaul is one of the most distinguished scholars in the world today. He has played a crucial role in leading research initiatives and has excelled in fostering communication among researchers across diverse disciplines globally. Notably, his work spans various research areas, including graph theory, network models, reliability theory, stochastic optimization, operations research, probability theory, sampling theory, cluster analysis, scaling, and multivariate data analysis. His contributions extend beyond theoretical topics to practical applications of statistical and mathematical tools in significant fields such as computer science (e.g., data mining), business research (e.g., market segmentation), management science (e.g., decision support systems), and behavioral sciences (e.g., preference measurement). All his endeavors reflect the highest level of professional excellence.

Entrepreneurship is a field of research that is related to many others, e. g., behavioral sciences, economics, finance, innovation, and marketing – to mention just a few – and needs permanent interchange with practice. For the necessary interdisciplinary exchange of information, ideas, and results the Symposia on the Entrepreneurship – Innovation – Marketing Interface provide an excellent opportunity. After two conferences at the University of Karlsruhe, the 3rd Symposium took place at the University of Cottbus in 2009 together with the 2nd BIEM-Symposium on Entrepreneurship and Innovation. This volume contains a selection of revised articles from this conference grouped in the following chapters: Technology Transfer, Spin-Offs, and Knowledge Management, International Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, Open Innovation, New Product Development, and Commercialization, Opportunity Recognition and Evaluation, and Gender-Specific Aspects of High-Tech Start Ups.

The volume presents innovations in data analysis and classification and gives an overview of the state of the art in these scientific fields and applications. Areas that receive considerable attention in the book are discrimination and clustering, data analysis and statistics, as well as applications in marketing, finance, and medicine. The reader will find material on recent technical and methodological developments and a large number of applications demonstrating the usefulness of the newly developed techniques.

Die Conjointanalyse ist ein wichtiges Marketing-Instrument. Damit lassen sich Kundenorientierung und Marktabdeckung verbessern, Umsätze und Gewinne steigern sowie neue Güter und Dienstleistungen erfolgreich platzieren. Das Buch bietet eine kurze und prägnante Einführung in die Grundlagen und Anwendungsmöglichkeiten der Conjointanalyse. Renommierte Experten aus Wissenschaft und Praxis vermitteln Methodik und Anwendung und zeigen anhand von Praxisbeispielen, wie die Conjointanalyse erfolgreich im Unternehmen genutzt werden kann.

Bei methodischen Ansätzen zur produktpolitischen Entscheidungsfindung erfolgt häufig ein sogenannter kombinierter Einsatz von Methoden. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird eine Unterstützung bei den vielfältigen damit verbundenen Methodenauswahl- und -anwendungsproblemen konzipiert und ein wissensbasierter Prototyp entwickelt, dessen Methodenbank neben Aggregations-, Transformations- und Klassifikationsverfahren auch zahlreiche Modelle der MDS und der Conjointanalyse sowie Simulations- und Optimierungsmodelle umfaßt. Anwendungsbeispiele für Produktgestaltungs- und Produktpositionierungsfragestellungen dienen der Erläuterung.