Sensory evaluation plays an important role in New Product Development (NPD) in food industry. In the present study, the current trends of using sensory evaluation in NPD in the food industry in countries that belong to EIT Regional Innovation Scheme (RIS) were identified. The research was conducted in the first quarter of 2020. Computer assisted self-interviewing (CASI) technique for survey data collection was used. The sample included 122 respondents representing RIS countries that are the EU Member States and European Horizon 2020 Associated Countries that are classified as modest and moderate innovators according to European Innovation Scoreboard. The analysis presented in the paper allowed to describe the methods of sensory evaluation that can be used to support NPD in the food industry, identify the trends of using sensory evaluation in NPD in the food industry companies in RIS countries. The research results showed that almost 70% of companies apply sensory evaluation methods in NPD. The larger the company, the more often the methods of sensory evaluation are used in NPDs. Almost 60% of companies employing 51–100, 101–1000 and more than 5000 people, respectively declare the use of expert (analytical) test. However, regardless of size, most companies prefer consumer (affective) test to expert tests. Based on the results, it seems that the potential of usage sensory evaluation methods is not yet fully exploited in the food industry.

In the Industry 4.0 era, the Digital Twin has become one of the most promising enabling technologies supporting material flow. Although the literature on the Digital Twin is becoming relatively well explored, including a certain number of review papers, the context of the Digital Twins application in internal transport systems has not been investigated so far. This paper thoroughly reviews the research on the Digital Twins applied in internal transport systems concerning major research trends within this research area and identification of future research directions. It provides clarification of various definitions related to the Digital Twin concept, including misconceptions such as a digital shadow, a digital model, and a digital mirror. Additionally, the relationships between terms such as material handling, material flow, and intralogistics in the context of internal transport systems coupled with the Digital Twin are explained. This paper’s contribution to the current state of the art of the Digital Twins is three-fold: (1) recognition of the most influential and high-impact journals, papers, and researchers; (2) identification of the major research trends related to the Digital Twins applications in internal transport systems, and (3) presentation of future research agendas in investigating Digital Twins applied for internal transport systems.

Sustainable business models have become a phenomenon of global interest. Since the beginning of the 21st century, companies have sought to shift from traditional business models towards sustainable ones in order to leverage their sustainable performance and increase their competitive advantage. The aim of this paper is to provide an extensive overview of the academic research on sustainable business models with the focus on inquiry of main trends related to business and economics studies and identification of future research directions. This paper reviews existing literature on sustainable business models in order to map this research stream and identify the most substantial contributors to the advances of research in this field. It contributes to the existing body of knowledge on sustainable business models by: (1) describing the most influential and high-impact researchers/authors, journals, and papers; (2) highlighting main and most important research trends related to sustainable business models in studies on business and economics; and (3) identifying future research agendas in investigating sustainable business models from business and economics perspectives.

Universities have a pivotal role to play in the challenging restructuring process that economies are undergoing due to higher education’s critical role in the information age. Universities can contribute to this process of change by creating new knowledge as well as by shaping new skills, which are necessary for exploiting modern technologies and understanding how technology interacts with society. The aim of this paper is to compare universities from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in terms of creativity related to research and educational activity. The knowledge triangle concept is employed to compare involvement of universities in education, research, and innovation. The divisive hierarchical clustering was used to group countries by knowledge triangle performance. Five clusters have been identified regarding research-education-innovation interactions. The study contributes by shedding light on education as the missing link between research and innovation in the CEE countries and extends knowledge about heterogeneity of this region in terms of creativity. It also contributes to the discourse how innovation policies can support universities’ structural transformations towards integration of their education, research, and innovation activities that will enable to confront an array of societal challenges.

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has generated great interest among researchers from different disciplines as it is multidisciplinary research. Sustainability for the IoV requires solutions from different perspectives, particularly in the context of environmental, social, and corporate governance. This review paper examines each of the mentioned perspectives of IoV research which were conducted among at least one of these three perspectives. On the one hand, this allows determining how widely research on the IoV system has been conducted. Moreover, it shows the directions of research on the IoV. On the other hand, it determines whether and how the IoV research is linked to each of the perspectives separately and analyses this link from a global perspective as well; i.e., it analyses the survey data in terms of the data’s relationship to all the perspectives as a group. As one of the research results, a conceptual model of IoV systems allocating the ESG perspectives was developed. The current research has shown that consideration of IoV systems in the context of these three perspectives (treated both individually and collectively) is still limited. A balanced approach towards these IoV systems is still required. Therefore, the paper consists of a survey of the current research related to the sustainability of the IoV from the three mentioned perspectives, aiming to give a balanced view of the importance of the three perspectives for IoV systems.

Purpose: Common availability of digital technologies encouraged companies in almost all industries to focus on exploring various ways of benefiting from their adoption and thus taking steps toward their digital transformation. This paper aims to describe the digital transformation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as a challenging opportunity and identify ways in which companies from the food industry address it.Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents empirical evidence based on a case study of the Polish freeze-drying market and companies operating on it. This study adopted a single case study research method to describe the digital transformation journey of SMEs. The sample constitutes a single sectoral case study with more than one unit of analysis – sixteen companies. The undertaken approach follows an embedded case study design and allows for an extensive and multidimensional analysis of rich empirical data.Findings: The results of this analysis allowed to identify four significant trends describing human resources involvement in the digital transformation of freeze-drying companies in Poland (i.e. visionary top-down, cooperative task-oriented, persuasive bottom-up, chaotic), a detailed catalog of outcomes of digital transformation from the perspective of food industry companies grouped in seven categories and a list of main barriers to digital transformation.Originality/value: This paper contributes to expanding knowledge on the practices of food industry companies in addressing challenges posed by the development of information technology and the dynamically changing environment after the COVID-19 pandemic. It contributes further to the discussion related to context-, industry- and country-specific barriers to digital transformation, identifying time-related constraints as an essential barrier to digital transformation.