Platform Rules: Multi-Sided Platforms as Regulators

This paper provides a basic conceptual framework for interpreting non-price instruments used by multi-sided platforms (MSPs) by analogizing MSPs as "private regulators" who regulate access to and interactions around the platform. We present evidence on Facebook, TopCoder, Roppongi Hills and Harvard Business School to document the "regulatory" role played by MSPs. We find MSPs use nuanced combinations of legal, technological, informational and other instruments (including price-setting) to implement desired outcomes. Non-price instruments were very much at the core of MSP strategies.Platforms, regulation, network effects, distributed innovation

Closed-loop Dynamics of In-core Thermionic Reactor Systems

Using a point model of an in-core thermionic converter, alternative schemes for providing closed loop reactor control were investigated. It was found that schemes based on variable gain power regulation buffers which use the reactor current as the control variable provide complete protection from thermionic burnout and also provide a virtually constant voltage to the user. A side benefit is that the emitter temperature transients are small-even for a complete electric load drop the emitter temperature transient is less than 100 deg K. The current regulation scheme was selected for further study with a distributed parameter model which was developed to account for variations in thermionic and heat transfer properties along the length of a cylindrical converter. It was found that even though the emitter temperature distribution is about 200 deg K along the converter length, the dynamic properties are unchanged when using the current control scheme

Why Do Employees Keep Choosing the Expensive Health Care Plan? An Investigation of the Quality and Logic of Employee Health Care Plan Selections

In 1991, The Dannon Company provided 287 of its employees with a choice of healthcare plans. The new plan was less expensive and designed to fit employees\u27 needs better. Contrary to managerial expectation, three-quarters of employees continued to choose the more expensive plan. To study why this was occurring and to determine if these choices reflected employee mistakes, a cooperative effort was begun between The Dannon Company and Cornell University. This cooperative effort allowed us to investigate this problem using actual employee medical claims. Analysis revealed employees strive not only to minimize costs, but also to avoid risk in their health care plan decisions. Overall, employees with the most significant cost difference chose the plan with the lowest total costs. This effect translated into financial savings for the employees. Employees were better off as a group with the freedom to make their own selections than they would have been if they had been forced into either of the two available health care options. Thus, this study demonstrated that choice is valuable to employees. Implications for Dannon and for future research are discussed

Global Talentship: Toward a Decision Science Connecting Talent to Global Strategic Success

It is widely accepted that global competitive advantage frequently requires managing such complex situations that traditional organization and job structures are simply insufficient. Increasingly, in order to create a flexible and integrated set of decisions that balance local flexibility with global efficiency, organizations must rely on more social, informal and matrix-based shared visions among managers and employees. Research on global strategic advantage, global organizational structures, and even shared mindsets has suggested that dimensions of culture, product and function provide a valuable organizing framework. However, typical decisions about organization structure, HRM practices and talent often remain framed at such a high level as to preclude their solution. We maintain that there is often no logical answer to such questions as, “Should the sales force be local or global?” or “Should product authority rest with the countries or the corporate center?” However, we propose that embedding business processes or value chains within a Culture and Product matrix provides the necessary analytic detail to reveal otherwise elusive solutions. Moreover, by linking this global process matrix to a model that bridges strategy and talent, it is possible to identify global “pivotal talent pools,” and to target organizational and human resource investments toward those talent areas that have the greatest impact on strategic advantage. We demonstrate the Value-Chain, Culture and Product (VCCP) matrix using several examples, and discuss future research and practical implications, particularly for leadership and leadership development

Rugged, low-conductance, heat-flow probe

Lightweight, compact probe structure has low thermal conductance to enable accurate measurement of slight temperature gradients. Probe combines ruggedness, high precision, accuracy, and stability. Device can withstand vibration, shock, acceleration, temperature extremes, and high vacuums, and should interest industrial engineers and geologists

Ongoing transients in carbonate compensation

Uptake of anthropogenic CO2 is acidifying the oceans. Over the next 2000 years, this will modify the dissolution and preservation of sedimentary carbonate. By coupling new formulas for the positions of the calcite saturation horizon, zsat, the compensation depth, zcc, and the snowline, zsnow, to a biogeochemical model of the oceanic carbonate system, we evaluate how these horizons will change with ongoing ocean acidification. Our model is an extended Havardton-Bear-type box model, which includes novel kinetic descriptions for carbonate dissolution above, between, and below these critical depths. In the preindustrial ocean, zsat and zcc are at 3939 and 4750 m, respectively. When forced with the IS92a CO2 emission scenario, the model forecasts (1) that zsat will rise rapidly (“runaway” conditions) so that all deep water becomes undersaturated, (2) that zcc will also rise and over 1000 years will pass before it will be stabilized by the dissolution of previously deposited CaCO3, and (3) that zsnow will respond slowly to acidification, rising by ∼1150 m during a 2000 year timeframe. A further simplified model that equates the compensation and saturation depths produces quantitatively different results. Finally, additional feedbacks due to acidification on calcification and increased atmospheric CO2 on organic matter productivity strongly affect the positions of the compensation horizons and their dynamics.

“Open” disclosure of innovations, incentives and follow-on reuse: Theory on processes of cumulative innovation and a field experiment in computational biology

AbstractMost of society's innovation systems – academic science, the patent system, open source, etc. – are “open” in the sense that they are designed to facilitate knowledge disclosure among innovators. An essential difference across innovation systems is whether disclosure is of intermediate progress and solutions or of completed innovations. We theorize and present experimental evidence linking intermediate versus final disclosure to an ‘incentives-versus-reuse’ tradeoff and to a transformation of the innovation search process. We find intermediate disclosure has the advantage of efficiently steering development towards improving existing solution approaches, but also has the effect of limiting experimentation and narrowing technological search. We discuss the comparative advantages of intermediate versus final disclosure policies in fostering innovation

Development of magnetostrictive active members for control of space structures

The goal of this Phase 2 Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) project was to determine the technical feasibility of developing magnetostrictive active members for use as truss elements in space structures. Active members control elastic vibrations of truss-based space structures and integrate the functions of truss structure element, actively controlled actuator, and sensor. The active members must control structural motion to the sub-micron level and, for many proposed space applications, work at cryogenic temperatures. Under this program both room temperature and cryogenic temperature magnetostrictive active members were designed, fabricated, and tested. The results of these performance tests indicated that room temperature magnetostrictive actuators feature higher strain, stiffness, and force capability with lower amplifier requirements than similarly sized piezoelectric or electrostrictive active members, at the cost of higher mass. Two different cryogenic temperature magnetostrictive materials were tested at liquid nitrogen temperatures, both with larger strain capability than the room temperature magnetostrictive materials. The cryogenic active member development included the design and fabrication of a cryostat that allows operation of the cryogenic active member in a space structure testbed

Seasonality in the Surface Energy Balance of Tundra in the Lower Mackenzie River Basin

This study details seasonal characteristics in the annual surface energy balance of upland and lowland tundra during the 1998–99 water year (Y2). It contrasts the results with the 1997–98 water year (Y1) and relates the findings to the climatic normals for the lower Mackenzie River basin region. Both years were much warmer than the long-term average, with Y1 being both warmer and wetter than Y2. Six seasons are defined as early winter, midwinter, late winter, spring, summer, and fall. The most rapid changes in the surface energy balance occur in spring, fall, and late winter. Of these, spring is the most dynamic, and there is distinct asymmetry between rates of change in spring and those in fall. Rates of change of potential insolation (extraterrestrial solar radiation) in late winter, spring, and fall are within 10% of one another, being highest in late winter and smallest in spring. Rates of change in air temperature and ground temperature are twice as large in spring as in fall and late winter, when they are about the same. Rates of change in components of the energy balance in spring are twice and 4 times as large as in fall and late winter, respectively. The timing of snowpack ripening and snowmelt is the major agent determining the magnitude of asymmetry between fall and spring. This timing is a result of interaction between the solar cycle, air temperature, and snowpack longevity. Based on evidence from this study, potential surface responses to a 18C increase in air temperature are small to moderate in most seasons, but are large in spring when increases range from 7% to 10% of average surface energy fluxes

Solid-Liquid two-phase partitioning bioreactors for the treatment of gas.-phase VOCs

[Abstract] Two-Phase Partitioning Bioreactors (TPPBs) consist of a cell-containing aqueous phase and a separate, biocompatible and immiscible phase that partitions toxic substrates to the cells based on their metabolic demand and on maintaining the thermodynamic equilibrium of the system. TPPBs have traditionally used immiscible liquid organic solvents as the substrate delivery phase, however, one of the limitations of organic solvents is their potential bioavailability as substrates, and therefore these TPPB systems have generally been limited to the use of pure strains of organisms incapable of metabolizing the solvent. We have replaced the organic solvent phase in TPPBs with inert polymers (plastic beads). A TPPB employing styrene-butadiene beads as the sequestering phase was used to treat high step change loadings of BTEX in a contaminated air stream. The presence of the polymers allowed the system to effectively capture the incoming VOCs, buffer the cells from high VOC levels and release the VOCs to the cells for biodegradation. The polymer TPPB system demonstrated substantially higher performance than an aqueous phase bioscrubber and comparable performance to a solvent-aqueous TPPB. Also of great interest was the increase in oxygen transfer provided to the system by the addition of polymer beads, which have significant affinity for oxygen. The presence of polymer beads, which are biocompatible and non-bioavailable, provides a simple and effective means of enhancing the bioremediation of toxic organics present in gas streams, and potentially other phases