• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.1-23
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• 2014

Market forecasting aims to estimate the sales volume of a product or service that is sold to consumers for a specific selling period. From the perspective of the enterprise, accurate market forecasting assists in determining the timing of new product introduction, product design, and establishing production plans and marketing strategies that enable a more efficient decision-making process. Moreover, accurate market forecasting enables governments to efficiently establish a national budget organization. This study aims to generate a market growth curve for ICT (information and communication technology) goods using past time series data; categorize products showing similar growth patterns; understand markets in the industry; and forecast the future outlook of such products. This study suggests the useful and meaningful process (or methodology) to identify the market growth pattern with quantitative growth model and data mining algorithm. The study employs the following methodology. At the first stage, past time series data are collected based on the target products or services of categorized industry. The data, such as the volume of sales and domestic consumption for a specific product or service, are collected from the relevant government ministry, the National Statistical Office, and other relevant government organizations. For collected data that may not be analyzed due to the lack of past data and the alteration of code names, data pre-processing work should be performed. At the second stage of this process, an optimal model for market forecasting should be selected. This model can be varied on the basis of the characteristics of each categorized industry. As this study is focused on the ICT industry, which has more frequent new technology appearances resulting in changes of the market structure, Logistic model, Gompertz model, and Bass model are selected. A hybrid model that combines different models can also be considered. The hybrid model considered for use in this study analyzes the size of the market potential through the Logistic and Gompertz models, and then the figures are used for the Bass model. The third stage of this process is to evaluate which model most accurately explains the data. In order to do this, the parameter should be estimated on the basis of the collected past time series data to generate the models' predictive value and calculate the root-mean squared error (RMSE). The model that shows the lowest average RMSE value for every product type is considered as the best model. At the fourth stage of this process, based on the estimated parameter value generated by the best model, a market growth pattern map is constructed with self-organizing map algorithm. A self-organizing map is learning with market pattern parameters for all products or services as input data, and the products or services are organized into an $N{\times}N$ map. The number of clusters increase from 2 to M, depending on the characteristics of the nodes on the map. The clusters are divided into zones, and the clusters with the ability to provide the most meaningful explanation are selected. Based on the final selection of clusters, the boundaries between the nodes are selected and, ultimately, the market growth pattern map is completed. The last step is to determine the final characteristics of the clusters as well as the market growth curve. The average of the market growth pattern parameters in the clusters is taken to be a representative figure. Using this figure, a growth curve is drawn for each cluster, and their characteristics are analyzed. Also, taking into consideration the product types in each cluster, their characteristics can be qualitatively generated. We expect that the process and system that this paper suggests can be used as a tool for forecasting demand in the ICT and other industries.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.43-57
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• 2012

To enhance the competitive advantage in a constantly changing business environment, an enterprise management must make the right decision in many business activities based on both internal and external information. Thus, providing accurate information plays a prominent role in management's decision making. Intuitively, historical data can provide a feasible estimate through the forecasting models. Therefore, if the service department can estimate the service quantity for the next period, the service department can then effectively control the inventory of service related resources such as human, parts, and other facilities. In addition, the production department can make load map for improving its product quality. Therefore, obtaining an accurate service forecast most likely appears to be critical to manufacturing companies. Numerous investigations addressing this problem have generally employed statistical methods, such as regression or autoregressive and moving average simulation. However, these methods are only efficient for data with are seasonal or cyclical. If the data are influenced by the special characteristics of product, they are not feasible. In our research, we propose a forecasting framework that predicts service demand of manufacturing organization by combining Case-based reasoning (CBR) and leveraging an unsupervised artificial neural network based clustering analysis (i.e., Self-Organizing Maps; SOM). We believe that this is one of the first attempts at applying unsupervised artificial neural network-based machine-learning techniques in the service forecasting domain. Our proposed approach has several appealing features : (1) We applied CBR and SOM in a new forecasting domain such as service demand forecasting. (2) We proposed our combined approach between CBR and SOM in order to overcome limitations of traditional statistical forecasting methods and We have developed a service forecasting tool based on the proposed approach using an unsupervised artificial neural network and Case-based reasoning. In this research, we conducted an empirical study on a real digital TV manufacturer (i.e., Company A). In addition, we have empirically evaluated the proposed approach and tool using real sales and service related data from digital TV manufacturer. In our empirical experiments, we intend to explore the performance of our proposed service forecasting framework when compared to the performances predicted by other two service forecasting methods; one is traditional CBR based forecasting model and the other is the existing service forecasting model used by Company A. We ran each service forecasting 144 times; each time, input data were randomly sampled for each service forecasting framework. To evaluate accuracy of forecasting results, we used Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) as primary performance measure in our experiments. We conducted one-way ANOVA test with the 144 measurements of MAPE for three different service forecasting approaches. For example, the F-ratio of MAPE for three different service forecasting approaches is 67.25 and the p-value is 0.000. This means that the difference between the MAPE of the three different service forecasting approaches is significant at the level of 0.000. Since there is a significant difference among the different service forecasting approaches, we conducted Tukey's HSD post hoc test to determine exactly which means of MAPE are significantly different from which other ones. In terms of MAPE, Tukey's HSD post hoc test grouped the three different service forecasting approaches into three different subsets in the following order: our proposed approach > traditional CBR-based service forecasting approach > the existing forecasting approach used by Company A. Consequently, our empirical experiments show that our proposed approach outperformed the traditional CBR based forecasting model and the existing service forecasting model used by Company A. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides some research background information such as summary of CBR and SOM. Section 3 presents a hybrid service forecasting framework based on Case-based Reasoning and Self-Organizing Maps, while the empirical evaluation results are summarized in Section 4. Conclusion and future research directions are finally discussed in Section 5.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1-17
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• 2012

Personalized smart devices such as smartphones and smart pads are widely used. Unlike traditional feature phones, theses smart devices allow users to choose a variety of functions, which support not only daily experiences but also business operations. Actually, there exist a huge number of applications accessible by smart device users in online and mobile application markets. Users can choose apps that fit their own tastes and needs, which is impossible for conventional phone users. With the increase in app demand, the tastes and needs of app users are becoming more diverse. To meet these requirements, numerous apps with diverse functions are being released on the market, which leads to fierce competition. Unlike offline markets, online markets have a limitation in that purchasing decisions should be made without experiencing the items. Therefore, online customers rely more on item-related information that can be seen on the item page in which online markets commonly provide details about each item. Customers can feel confident about the quality of an item through the online information and decide whether to purchase it. The same is true of online app markets. To win the sales competition against other apps that perform similar functions, app developers need to focus on writing app descriptions to attract the attention of customers. If we can measure the effect of app descriptions on sales without regard to the app's price and quality, app descriptions that facilitate the sale of apps can be identified. This study intends to provide such a quantitative result for app developers who want to promote the sales of their apps. For this purpose, we collected app details including the descriptions written in Korean from one of the largest app markets in Korea, and then extracted keywords from the descriptions. Next, the impact of the keywords on sales performance was measured through our econometric model. Through this analysis, we were able to analyze the impact of each keyword itself, apart from that of the design or quality. The keywords, comprised of the attribute and evaluation of each app, are extracted by a morpheme analyzer. Our model with the keywords as its input variables was established to analyze their impact on sales performance. A regression analysis was conducted for each category in which apps are included. This analysis was required because we found the keywords, which are emphasized in app descriptions, different category-by-category. The analysis conducted not only for free apps but also for paid apps showed which keywords have more impact on sales performance for each type of app. In the analysis of paid apps in the education category, keywords such as 'search+easy' and 'words+abundant' showed higher effectiveness. In the same category, free apps whose keywords emphasize the quality of apps showed higher sales performance. One interesting fact is that keywords describing not only the app but also the need for the app have asignificant impact. Language learning apps, regardless of whether they are sold free or paid, showed higher sales performance by including the keywords 'foreign language study+important'. This result shows that motivation for the purchase affected sales. While item reviews are widely researched in online markets, item descriptions are not very actively studied. In the case of the mobile app markets, newly introduced apps may not have many item reviews because of the low quantity sold. In such cases, item descriptions can be regarded more important when customers make a decision about purchasing items. This study is the first trial to quantitatively analyze the relationship between an item description and its impact on sales performance. The results show that our research framework successfully provides a list of the most effective sales key terms with the estimates of their effectiveness. Although this study is performed for a specified type of item (i.e., mobile apps), our model can be applied to almost all of the items traded in online markets.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.44-50
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• 2013

The persons in charge of management request diagnosis and prescription to tree hospitals in order to get consultation about the problems like blight that occur in landscape tree management. This study aims to analyze what the main problems and questions raised by landscape gardeners are and those concerned in landscape tree management. This is done by investigating landscape tree-related questions and answers uploaded on the online consultation boards of the plant diagnostic centers approved in Korea including the Seoul National University Plant Clinic, the Chungbuk National University Plant Hospital, and the Kangwon Diagnostic Center. As a result, those concerned in landscape occupied the most as 81.4% among the questioners. However, only 11.5% did explain the plant management history or surrounding environment, which is essential for landscape tree diagnosis when asking questions. This shows that those concerned in landscape lack basic knowledge or interest about plant diagnosis. Among 263 questions about landscape trees, questions about physiological damage included 94 cases that were the most taking up 35.8%. Moreover, the next were damage by insects and damage by disease in order. It is thought that due to the characteristics of physiological problems that occur by various sorts of stress and with no signs, they tend to request diagnosis or prescription the most. The most frequent reasons for physiological damage are water stress and temperature stress. About damage by disease, there exist many types of diseases, and there are many complex damages accompanied by physiological causes. About damage by insects, the most common include damage by moths. In consideration of this result, universities or technician training centers should provide education for landscape tree management so that landscape technicians and students can acquire essential knowledge and information about landscape tree management and increase their interest in it. In particular, it is necessary to provide profound learning opportunities for plant physiology, and the technicians should make efforts themselves. In addition, it is needed to build organizations to which they can ask technical questions about landscape planting and management in order to understand landscape industry in general and the actual status of landscape planting technique and the actual field. Moreover, to elevate systemicity and expertise in the area of landscape tree management not yet equipped with the foundation, it is needed to cultivate the technicians intensively and conduct research by those concerned both in academic and industrial circles.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.378-392
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• 2003

The purpose of this study is to investigate the depth of earth science teachers' concern over the 7th Science Curriculum and levels of their use of it in reality, using the tools "Concern" and "Levels of use" which are two important tools use in CBAM. The results of the study are as follows. How much concern do the earth science teachers have over the 7th Science Curriculum? There are seven stages (from 0 stage to 6 stage) of teachers' concern over the curriculum. o stage represents teachers' indifference to the curriculum and 98% teachers are placed in this stage. According to the study on teachers' teaching experience, teachers having from 10 to 14 years of teaching experience are the most indifferent to the 7th Science Curriculum, compared to other teachers. Which levels of use of the 7th science curriculum do earth science teachers choose in reality? There are five levels of use (from 1 to 5) of the 7th curriculum. 43.97% of teachers are placed in the 3rd level called "Mechanical level", which represents a teacher-concerned learning method with consideration of learners' response. According to the study on teachers' frequency of level of use in the fields of "Instruction objects, Instruction contents, Instruction methods, Instruction materials and Evaluation.", teachers chose high levels of use in the fields of "Instruction objects and Instruction contents" and low levels of use in the other three fields. What factors are barriers for earth science teachers to perform the 7th Science Curriculum in reality? 80.9% of teachers have trouble performing the 7th Science Curriculum in reality because of too much routine work, official papers, and lack of instructional materials, laboratories, training systems and workshops. The two biggest barriers among the above are routine work and of official papers. According to the study on teachers' teaching experience, teachers having from 0 to years of teaching experience have the most trouble in performing the curriculum in reality, compared to other teachers.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.131-153
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• 2001

The importance of identifying gifted children during early childhood is becoming recognized. Nonetheless, most researchers preferred to study the primary and secondary levels where children are already and more clearly demonstrating what talents they have, and where more reliable predictions of gifted may be made. Comparatively lisle work has been done in this area. When we identify giftedness during early childhood, we have to consider the potential of the young children rather than on actual achievement. Giftedness during early childhood is still developing and less stable than that of older children and this prevents us from making firm and accurate predictions based on children's actual achievement. Dynamic assessment, based on Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development(ZPD), suggests a new idea in the way the gifted young children are identified. In light of dynamic assessment, for identifying the potential giftedness of young children. we need to involve measuring both unassisted and assisted performance. Dynamic assessment usually consists of a test-intervene-retest format that focuses attention on the improvement in child performance when an adult provides mediated assistance on how to master the testing task. The advantages of the dynamic assessment are as follows: First, the dynamic assessment approach can provide a useful means for assessing young gifted child who have not demonstrated high ability on traditional identification method. Second, the dynamic assessment approach can assess the learning process of young children. Third, the dynamic assessment can lead an individualized education by the early identification of young gifted children. Fourth, the dynamic assessment can be a more accurate predictor of potential by linking diagnosis and instruction. Thus, it can make us provide an educational treatment effectively for young gifted children.

• Journal of Agricultural Extension & Community Development
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.121-136
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• 2000

This study reports on a comparison between the Korean diffusion of agricultural innovation or extension service and the cooperative extension service in the United States of America. It focuses on relevant differences between the two systems and provides recommendation for improvement of the Korean system to insure success in important areas related to the diffusion of agricultural innovations. After a comparative study on diffusion of innovations it is clear that: in order to have a productive agriculture that makes effective and efficient use of natural resources and helps achieve sustainability goals, a mechanism that delivers knowledge to agricultural communities must be established and maintained. This mechanism is clearly an agricultural extension service that is cooperatively funded by federal, state and local governments and that insures participation of constituents in the process of establishing priorities and evaluating achievements. The success of US agriculture, the most productive in the world, is to a large degree to the Cooperative Extension Service. Based on the results of this study and the differences of the United States and Korea, the following recommendations should be emphasized for more effective communication for agricultural innovation and rural development in Korea: 1) In order to insure that extension educators are high caliber professional individuals, it is important to establish a system that nationally recognizes these individuals as such, and that provides a professional development path. 2) The results of the decision of transfer of extension educators to local governments has not yielded positive outcomes, especially in terms of professional status. It is clearly demonstrable that valuable professionals are leaving the service, that local governments do not have the will and resources to implement a successful extension program. 3) Because of the critical importance of diffusing innovations to agricultural producers in order to insure and quality and steady food supply, it is of critical importance that these issues be addressed before the extension service is further deteriorated. Given the cement situation, it is clear that the extension service should become nationally supported again in cooperation with local and state governments and that extension professionals be given appropriate rank at the national level, commesurate with their peers in research and teaching. 4) The common current committee practice of lengthy reporting and short discussion needs to be changed to one that results in char, brief and substantive action oriented goals. Joint participation by researchers, extension educators and farmers should be encouraged in planning, implementation and evaluation of communication for agricultural innovations. Roles and functions of committees for institutional cooperation, and or agricultural extension committees should be enlarged. 5) Extension educators should be encouraged to adopt new communication technologies to improve their diffusion of innovations methods. Agricultural institutions and organizations should be encouraged to adopt farmer-first and or client-oriented approach in agricultural extension and diffusion of agricultural technologies. The number, complexity and rapid change of information in agricultural extension require the development of a computer based information and report system to support agricultural extension. 6) To facilitate and expand the further development of communication for agricultural innovation and rural development, agricultural communication programs in universities especially in colleges of agriculture and life sciences. 7) To strengthening the sense of national and social responsibility communication for agricultural innovation and rural development among students in agricultural colleges and universities through participation in learning activities by proactive recruitment. 8) To establish and reinforce a policy that insures participation in communication for agricultural innovation and regal development activities. 9) To improve further development of communication for agricultural innovation and rural development in Korea, more research activities should be encouraged.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.159-176
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to investigate 1) how the middle school Home Economics teachers perceive the importance of the practical problem-focused instruction, 2) how often they perform the instruction, and 3) what they require for the implementation the instruction. Data were collected from 150 Home Economics teachers via e-mail survey and from 6 Home Economics teachers' face-to-face interviews. Descriptive statistics including frequency, percentage, average, and standard deviation, and the results of such analyses as ANOVA, T-test, and correlation were reported using SPSS/win 10.1. The results of this research were as follows: First, even though the majority of the respondents recognized the high need for practical problem-focused instruction, only a small portion of the respondents reported that they performed that instruction in the classroom. There was no correlation between the perception of the need for practical problem-focused instruction and the degree of performance of practical problem-focused instruction. Secondly, the of performance of practical problem-focused instruction was significantly different depending on the years of teaching experience and the subject that the teachers majored in. Job satisfaction had positive correlations with the perception of the need for practical problem-focused instruction and the degree of performance of practical problem-focused instruction. Thirdly, the more teachers shared information and materials with colleagues, the better they tended to be at practical problem-focused instruction. On the other hand, insufficient time for their instruction and a deficiency in understanding the rationale of the instruction were pointed out as barriers to classroom practice. The respondents answered that long-term training programs on the philosophical foundation of practical problem-focused instruction, materials related to the instruction as well as additional credits for Home Economics are most critical to reduce the discrepancy between the teacher perception and the classroom practice of practical problem-focused instruction.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.57-76
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• 2017

Recently, consumer needs are diversifying as information technologies are evolving rapidly. A lot of IT devices such as smart phones and tablet PCs are launching following the trend of information technology. While IT devices focused on the technical advance and improvement a few years ago, the situation is changed now. There is no difference in functional aspects, so companies are trying to differentiate IT devices in terms of appearance design. Consumers also consider design as being a more important factor in the decision-making of smart phones. Smart phones have become a fashion items, revealing consumers' own characteristics and personality. As the design and appearance of the smartphone become important things, it is necessary to examine consumer values from the design and appearance of IT devices. Furthermore, it is crucial to clarify the mechanisms of consumers' design evaluation and develop the design evaluation model based on the mechanism. Since the influence of design gets continuously strong, various and many studies related to design were carried out. These studies can classify three main streams. The first stream focuses on the role of design from the perspective of marketing and communication. The second one is the studies to find out an effective and appealing design from the perspective of industrial design. The last one is to examine the consumer values created by a product design, which means consumers' perception or feeling when they look and feel it. These numerous studies somewhat have dealt with consumer values, but they do not include product attributes, or do not cover the whole process and mechanism from product attributes to consumer values. In this study, we try to develop the holistic design evaluation model based on consumer values based on three-step approach from product attributes, perceived attributes, to consumer values. Product attributes means the real and physical characteristics each smart phone has. They consist of bezel, length, width, thickness, weight and curvature. Perceived attributes are derived from consumers' perception on product attributes. We consider perceived size of device, perceived size of display, perceived thickness, perceived weight, perceived bezel (top - bottom / left - right side), perceived curvature of edge, perceived curvature of back side, gap of each part, perceived gloss and perceived screen ratio. They are factorized into six clusters named as 'Size,' 'Slimness,' 'No-Frame,' 'Roundness,' 'Screen Ratio,' and 'Looseness.' We conducted qualitative research to find out consumer values, which are categorized into two: look and feel values. We identified the values named as 'Silhouette,' 'Neatness,' 'Attractiveness,' 'Polishing,' 'Innovativeness,' 'Professionalism,' 'Intellectualness,' 'Individuality,' and 'Distinctiveness' in terms of look values. Also, we identifies 'Stability,' 'Comfortableness,' 'Grip,' 'Solidity,' 'Non-fragility,' and 'Smoothness' in terms of feel values. They are factorized into five key values: 'Sleek Value,' 'Professional Value,' 'Unique Value,' 'Comfortable Value,' and 'Solid Value.' Finally, we developed the holistic design evaluation model by analyzing each relationship from product attributes, perceived attributes, to consumer values. This study has several theoretical and practical contributions. First, we found consumer values in terms of design evaluation and implicit chain relationship from the objective and physical characteristics to the subjective and mental evaluation. That is, the model explains the mechanism of design evaluation in consumer minds. Second, we suggest a general design evaluation process from product attributes, perceived attributes to consumer values. It is an adaptable methodology not only smart phone but also other IT products. Practically, this model can support the decision-making when companies initiative new product development. It can help product designers focus on their capacities with limited resources. Moreover, if its model combined with machine learning collecting consumers' purchasing data, most preferred values, sales data, etc., it will be able to evolve intelligent design decision support system.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.69-80
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• 2015

This can be promoted collaboration environment for the system and the system is very important for competitiveness, it is equipped. If so, could work in collaboration with members of the organization to promote collaboration what factors? Organizational collaboration and cooperation of many people working, or worth pursuing common goals by sharing information and processes to improve labor productivity, defined as collaboration. Factors that promote collaboration are shared visions, the organization's principles and rules that reflect the visions, on-line system developments, and communication methods. First, it embodies the vision shared by the more sympathetic members are active and voluntary participation in the activities of the organization can be achieved. Second, the members are aware of all the rules and principles of a united whole is accepted and leads to good performance. In addition, the ability to share sensitive business activities for self-development and also lead to work to make this a regular activity to create a team that can collaborate to help the environment and the atmosphere. Third, a systematic construction of the online collaboration system is made efficient and rapid task. According to Student team and A corporation we knew that Cloud services and social media, low-cost, high-efficiency services could achieve. The introduction of the latest information technology changes, the members of the organization's systems and active participation can take advantage of continuing education must be made. Fourth, the company to inform people both inside and outside of the organization to communicate actively to change the image of the company activities, the creation of corporate performance is very important to figure. Reflects the latest trend to actively use social media to communicate the effort is needed. For development of systematic collaboration promoting model steps to meet the organizational role. First, the Chief Executive Officer to make a firm and clear vision of the organization members to propagate the faith, empathy gives a sense of belonging should be able to have. Second, middle managers, CEO's vision is to systematically propagate the organizers rules and principles to establish a system would create. Third, general operatives internalize the vision of the company stating that the role of outside companies must adhere. The purpose of this study was well done in collaboration organizations promoting factors for strategic alignment model based on the golden circle and collaboration to understand and reflect the latest trends in information technology tools to take advantage of smart work and business know how student teams through case analysis will derive the success factors. This is the foundation for future empirical studies are expected to be present.