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In a group setting, the exposure to different thinking styles and people promotes what is called creative abrasion, which, if properly managed, can greatly enhance the Innovation potential. This is the philosophy behind MIETE, which was conceived in 2004 to promote innovation and entrepreneurship with multidisciplinary teams. With this in mind, MIETE aims at adapting itself to the profiles of candidates from different areas including, amongst others, Management, Engineering, Biotechnology, Sciences and Design. In this paper the authors, report their experiences during the feedback sessions of the last two years with MIETE students, particularly in the 'Implementation and Strategies for Technology Comercialisation' workshops.

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Web accessibility is growing in importance. We may also find an increasing need for access to web resources by those with some sort of disability. The Web is very important for spreading information and for promoting interaction between the various elements in society. Given this, it is essential that the Web presents itself as a totally accessible resource, so that it can help citizens with disabilities and their integration in society. This obligation should be even greater for enterprises as primarily the Web is used as a marketing and business platform. With this document, we present indicators regarding the [lack of] accessibility levels of Portuguese enterprise websites. This article contains theoretical and background considerations as well as the results of two different studies that the research team undertook. First of all, the research team made a comparison between the 1000 largest Portuguese enterprises (annual sales volume) and the 1000 best Portuguese small and medium enterprises (sales growth and profit) using a specialised software tool and according to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0; the research team then also considered WCAG 2.0 and its impact on enterprise Web accessibility. In the second study (qualitative in nature), focus group interactions led to a set of recommendations towards greater accessibility.

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In the scope of virtual and networked enterprises, we propose a way to integrate quality management into enterprise modeling and allow for quality certification of the whole enterprise. ISO 9001:2000 is presented as a suitable standard for these enterprises quality management systems implementation. On the other hand, quality management system certification in the scope of ISO 10011 is quite difficult, being presented some alternative scenarios for certification.

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Virtual Worlds are designed for sociability, environments where people have interaction with other people. Enterprises have already started exploring this new world as a way to provide a compelling new value proposition to their products and services. This paper makes a proposal for addressing the issue of interoperability between virtual and real-world business environments as a way to foster value creation opportunities as the virtual and real world interact with each other. To this end, the authors propose the Integration of 2nd Life object behaviour modelling within the actual Enterprise Engineering Life-Cycle in order to achieve a seamless enactment of both interoperable models in the virtual and real world. We believe therefore that our approach can bring value to most interaction types, especially in integration of the consumer in the value network and in strengthening the relationship between the consumer and the actual physical product. It is our believe that this will foster new opportunities for value creation, both in the interaction between the enterprises (including different segments of the network value chain) and in the interaction between these and actual the product or service consumer. © 2008 Nottingham University.

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