Resourceedings

Open Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Leveraging External Ideas and Collaborations to Drive Business Growth

2026-10-01T16:10:48+00:00

Open innovation has appeared as a significant catalyst of entrepreneurial growth, facilitating firms to move beyond conventional boundaries and harness external knowledge, partnerships, and resources. Whilst showing considerable promise for business development, open innovation additionally showcases distinct challenges for entrepreneurs, including intellectual property (IP) rights management, partnership coordination, and the external incorporation of innovations into existing business models. Even with its surging popularity, there remains a shortage of empirical research investigating how entrepreneurs efficiently integrate and manage open innovation strategies, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startups. This paper examines this gap by investigating the enablers, barriers, and practical outcomes of open innovation from the entrepreneurial outlook.

The study adopts a qualitative research method, using semi-structured interviews with business owners and CEOs across a range of industries who have implemented open innovation practices. Purposeful sampling guarantees the inclusion of participants actively and deeply involved in external collaborations, like incubators, research institutions, and corporate partners. To intensify the depth and reliability of the findings, triangulation is accomplished through the combination of secondary data sources, comprising business plans, partnership agreements, and innovation–related documents, which supplement the primary interview data. The thematic analysis approach, as defined by Braun and Clarke (2006), is adopted to determine patterns and insights within the data.

Whilst qualitative research fundamentally entails smaller sample sizes, preferred participants are justified by their applicability to the research question, ensuring an in-depth study of open innovation dynamics. Possible constraints comprise self-reported biases and the subjective interpretation of qualitative data. To reduce these concerns, member checking and double - checking of data sources are implemented to boost the study’s validity and reliability.

This paper expands the existing scholarship by providing an insightful understanding of how entrepreneurs manage the intricacies of open innovation, especially in resource–constrained environments. It offers implementable conclusions for entrepreneurs, policymakers, and investors working towards promoting innovative ecosystems that support sustainable business growth.

Design an Immersive Learning Media Based on Spatial Augmented Reality Using Hand Tracking in the ChemMaster Application

2026-10-01T16:11:00+00:00

Today’s technological progress gives educators new ways to create engaging and effective learning experiences. This research introduces ChemMaster, a learning media application that combines Spatial Augmented Reality (AR) and hand-tracking technology to help high school students understand complex chemistry concepts. The development of ChemMaster followed a Design Thinking process, beginning with exploring students’ learning challenges through interviews and observations. As a core contribution, ChemMaster integrates an AI-powered automatic question scanning feature that provides step-by-step solutions, interactive 3D AR models of molecules and reactions, and gamified elements like quizzes and leaderboards to maintain motivation. To evaluate its usability and learning impact, a pilot study was conducted involving 15 participants, specifically 12 high school students and 3 chemistry teachers. Preliminary results show a high rate of task completion and user satisfaction; specifically, gesture-based hand-tracking interactions (e.g., zooming and rotating models) effectively bridged the gap between theoretical explanations and tangible visual comprehension. Although the study identified minor constraints, such as reduced tracking accuracy in low-light conditions, the findings demonstrate that ChemMaster significantly increases student engagement compared to traditional methods and offers a promising interactive tool to deepen chemistry understanding.

Functional study of cover holes for air cathodic protection and retention of cathodic function by ball-shaped cover

2026-10-01T16:11:12+00:00

As the world's electricity consumption increases in proportion to population growth, research on renewable energy sources to replace fossil-fuel-based power generation is underway around the world. Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are attracting attention as a renewable energy source that can generate electricity while decomposing pollutants in wastewater. Among these, single-chamber MFCs have low maintenance costs and are suitable for independent operation in outdoor environments. However, the air cathodes widely used in single-chamber MFCs are susceptible to degradation due to moisture. In this study, we proposed a simple method to protect the air cathode from moisture using a spherical frame. The spherical MFC we constructed prevented the inflow of wastewater whilst achieving stable, continuous operation for three months. Compared to an MFC where the cathode was contaminated by wastewater, the proposed spherical MFC exhibited an average output voltage 300 mV higher and a maximum power density approximately 13.9 times greater. The maximum power density of 14.27 μW/cm² is 42% lower than that of floating-type MFCs reported in previous studies, indicating room for improvement. However, as the spherical MFC frame also functions as a protective cover, it can contribute to the manufacture of more practical MFC devices.

Large-Scale Experimental Study of Proppant Transport and Placement in Rough Fractures of Conglomerate Reservoirs

2026-07-23T05:23:45+00:00

Proppant placement in rough fractures is controlled by coupled effects of operating parameters, particle settling, and fracture-surface heterogeneity, yet quantitative criteria for evaluating final placement remain limited. This study reanalyzes previously obtained large-scale visualization data from a 20.3 m × 4.5 m × 10 mm rough-fracture system and develops an engineering-oriented framework for quantitative placement evaluation. Five indicators were introduced: normalized effective supported area, normalized effective supported length, near-wellbore accumulation ratio, distal coverage ratio, and ridge-height coefficient of variation. Their responses to pumping rate, fracturing-fluid viscosity, proppant size, and sand concentration were systematically compared.

Results show that pumping rate primarily controls distal transport. Increasing the model pumping rate from 0.12 to 0.24 m³/min increased the normalized supported length from 0.875 to 1.000 and the distal coverage ratio from 0.026 to 0.115. Fluid viscosity and sand concentration showed stronger local sensitivities with respect to overall supported area, whereas particle size mainly affected the balance between distal transport and local deposition. Based on the combined indicators, four representative placement patterns were identified: near-wellbore accumulation, uniform spreading, distal-deficient placement, and bridging-prone high-loading placement.

An exploratory four-factor power-law correlation was further evaluated using leave-one-out cross-validation. Although the in-sample fit was moderate, the LOOCV results showed limited predictive robustness, indicating that the correlation should be treated as a geometry-specific summary rather than a validated predictive model. The proposed indicators and classification framework provide a quantitative basis for comparing proppant-placement quality in large-scale rough fractures.