Search results

“Where HAS that book been reviewed?” This question seemed to arise daily during my work as Adult Services Consultant for an upstate New York library system. Since I was responsible for the selection of new titles for the system pool collection as well as preparing buying lists for member libraries, I felt the need to have some way of “pulling together” all the reviews for new titles as they appeared in the book review media. It seemed to me that the book review indexes currently being published were inadequate in several ways, especially in the timely listing of current reviews and in the fact that you usually had to know the author's name in order to find citations to the reviews. How did I progress from perceiving a need for a more current listing of citations to book reviews and actually publishing my own index, Title Index of Current Reviews? Initially, several seemingly unrelated events led me in the direction I was eventually to take.

The aims of this study are to conduct a systematic review of public–private partnership (PPP) studies published from 2009 to 2019, to compare the results with Ke et al. (2009) who reviewed the PPP literature published from 1998 to 2008, and to trace the evolution of the PPP knowledge in the past two decades. This study also presents the possible directions that the PPP research may go towards in the future, arguably.

This study carried out a top journal-based search to identify the quality PPP articles published from 2009 to 2019. A total of 12 top-tier construction journals were systematically searched in the database of web of science (WOS), from which 279 PPP articles were identified for review.

The number of the identified articles, the titles of the journals, institutions, the most cited papers, and prevalent research methods were analyzed and compared. The existing PPP studies in construction journals were classified into seven streams. Through analysis of the PPP research status and gaps, five future research directions were revealed.

This study contributes to the current body of knowledge by revealing the research trend of PPP from 2009 to 2019. It presents the change of PPP development trend in the past decade through comparison with Ke et al. (2009). It also reveals the major research streams and points out the directions that the PPP research may go towards in the future. Moreover, this study is helpful to the practice as well. It can enhance the practitioners' understanding of the PPP development in the past decade. In addition, it identified the research institutions contributing the most in the area of PPP, which may serve as valuable reference for practitioners to locate the best institutions for consultancy or collaboration.

The Internet of Things (IoT), as one of the new digital technologies, has created wide applications in various industries, and one of the most influential industries of this technology is the transportation industry. By integrating the IoT with the transportation industry, there will be dramatic changes in the industry, and it will provide many entrepreneurial opportunities for entrepreneurs to develop new businesses. Opportunity identification is at the heart of the entrepreneurial process, and entrepreneurs identify innovative goods or services to enter a new market by identifying, evaluating, and exploiting opportunities. Despite the desire of transportation managers to invest in the IoT and the increase in research in this area, limited research has focused on IoT-based entrepreneurial opportunities in the transportation industry. Therefore, the present study aims to identify IoT-based entrepreneurial opportunities in the transportation industry and examine their importance.

To achieve the research objective, the authors applied a mixed approach. First, adapting the lens of the industry value chain theory, a comprehensive literature review, besides a qualitative approach including semi-structured interviews with experts and thematic analysis, was conducted to identify the entrepreneurial opportunities. The identified opportunities were confirmed in the second stage using a quantitative survey method, including the Student t-test and factor analysis. Finally, the identified opportunities were weighted and ranked using the best worst method (BWM).

Entrepreneurial opportunities are classified into five main categories, including “smart vehicles”, “business partners/smart transportation supply side”, “supporting services”, “infrastructures”, and “smart transport management and control”. The infrastructures group of opportunities ranked the highest amongst the identified groups.

This study adds to the digital entrepreneurship opportunity recognition literature by addressing opportunities in a smart industry propelled by digital technologies, including developing new products or new applications of the available technologies. Additionally, inspired by the industry value chain theory, this article develops a framework including various digital entrepreneurial opportunity networks which are necessary to add value to any industry and, thus, could be applied by entrepreneurs to recognize opportunities for new intermediaries to enter other digital-based industries. Finally, the present study identifies the IoT-based entrepreneurial opportunities in the smart transportation industry and prioritizes them, providing practical insights regarding the creation of entrepreneurial ecosystems in the field of smart transportation for entrepreneurs and policymakers.