Innovative technology enterprises are recognized internationally as an important pillar in modern economic activity. This paper presents the findings from a research combining qualitative and quantitative methods, with the specific goal of identifying and verifying the characteristics that affect their survival and growth. Results from an in-depth longitudinal qualitative case study, that examines a mature and constantly growing (in its 10-year operation) technologically innovative enterprise, reveal that a number of characteristics pertaining to both the profile of the entrepreneurial team, as well as of the employees, significantly affect company survival and growth in this context. Moreover, we recognize and analyze three stages in its evolution: an initial “evolutionary” growth (infancy and youth), followed by a “revolutionary” (crisis), and a second “evolutionary” (maturity) stage. Our findings are further corroborated and enriched through a survey with N = 27 entrepreneurs in innovative technology startups. We contribute to existing literature on innovative technology entrepreneurship, by identifying characteristics that entrepreneurs and employees should bear, towards its survival and growth. Moreover, a practical application of the life cycle approach is described for technologically innovative companies. Finally, a specific prescription that can help guide future theoretical and practical endeavors in innovative technology entrepreneurship is also provided accordingly.

Conserving energy amenable to the activities of occupants in public buildings is a particularly challenging objective that includes associating energy consumption to particular individuals and providing them with incentives to alter their behavior. This paper describes a gamification framework that aims to facilitate achieving greater energy conservation in public buildings. The framework leverages IoT-enabled low-cost devices, to improve energy disaggregation mechanisms that provide energy use and—consequently—wastage information at the device, area and end-user level. The identified wastages are concurrently targeted by a gamified application that motivates respective behavioral changes combining team competition, virtual rewards and life simulation. Our solution is being developed iteratively with the end-users’ engagement during the analysis, design, development and validation phases in public buildings located in three different countries: Luxembourg (Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art), Spain (EcoUrbanBuilding, Institut Català d’Energia headquarters, Barcelona) and Greece (General Secretariat of the Municipality of Athens).

Gamification can be used to effect positive behavioral change in various fields, including energy conservation. This paper reports on a survey we conducted to formulate a holistic view of users’ profiles and preferences in an Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled gamified mobile application that provides personalized energy-saving recommendation tips to employees, towards conserving energy and adopting a more green behavior at the workplace. The collected insight dictates that a gamified app promoting energy saving at the workplace may become a daily habit for its users if it at least includes three game design elements: progression, levels and points. Additionally, we complement existing design guidelines about the requirements of each HEXAD gamification user type (Philanthropist, Socializer, Free Spirit, Achiever, Disruptor, Player) in game elements, specifically for energy efficiency applications. Thus, we apply and validate the HEXAD gamification user typology in a new context – multicultural workplaces – as well as domain – energy-saving. Moreover, the collected insight inspired us to devise a modular, rule-based mechanism for formulating personalized energy-saving recommendation tips tailored to the users’ profiles and game design choices. This research may assist researchers, as well as practitioners, in designing personalized gamified behavioral interventions, especially towards energy conservation in workplaces.

The arrival of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has opened the door to a variety of services for building users. Considering the long-lasting issue of high energy use by buildings and low-energy literacy, it is tempting to use this new technology for increasing the literacy of users. This paper shows the results of a study performed in two pilot buildings with real users that have interacted with a series of energy educational interventions that encourage them in a timed and personalised way to reduce their energy consumption. The interventions aimed at reducing the consumption of energy and a close follow-up of the intervention from a behavioural aspect has been performed. The results show that the users, when interacting with the intervention and staying active, can reduce the energy consumption in the building by more than 30%, but the average savings are of 20%. This is in consensus with the literature, but in our case, the intervention has been one showing that personalised methods can result in energy reductions as large as those of more standard interventions.

Employees can help organizations attain Corporate Environmental Performance (CEP) goals and save on energy bills, by conserving electricity. However, they lack the motivation. Information Systems (IS)-enabled energy-related feedback interventions featuring gamification (utilizing game-design elements), have been suggested to increase organizational energy conservation. To identify the behavioral factors that should be considered when designing such interventions towards optimizing their results, this paper focuses on unravelling the intricacies of employee energy consumption behavior and providing answers to the research question: "What drives employees to save energy at work?". Our research is conducted in three workplaces across Europe. First, we analyze employees' energy-saving motivation and behavior at an individual level of analysis to identify defining behavioral factors behind it. Then, considering these drivers of employees' energy consumption behavior, we focus on answering the question: "How a gamified IS that provides real-time energy usage feedback affects employees' motivation to conserve energy at work, and in turn the actual energy savings in organizations". Our findings suggest that employees' level of self-determination to conserve energy, energy-saving personal norms, and personal and organizational profile, significantly explain both their energy-saving behavior and the energy behavior change attained through a gamified IS intervention. Moreover, the provision of feedback to employees, via an Internet-Of-Things (IoT)-enabled gamified IS, is proven an effective strategy for accomplishing actual energy conservation at work. The acquired insight on what drives employees' energy usage behavior supports the design of gamified IS interventions that have higher motivational capacity and, thus, can change employees' energy behavior. When designing behavioral interventions aimed at energy conservation at work, we should primarily focus on monitoring (to decide whether a behavioral intervention would be worth organizing) and ultimately positively affecting employees' energy-saving habits and intention. Our findings can be transformed to specific practical suggestions for firms to encourage employees' energy saving behavior when aspiring to attain CEP goals. They include satisfying their basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, activating their personal norms in the context of energy-saving at work, and educating and encouraging them towards specific energy-saving behaviors by utilizing gamified IoT-enabled IS that keep their energy-saving "in shape".