Knowledge flow across inter-firm networks: the influence of network resources, spatial proximity, and firm size

The objective of this paper is to analyze the characteristics and nature of the networks firms utilize to access knowledge and facilitate innovation. The paper draws on the notion of network resources, distinguishing two types: social capital – consisting of the social relations and networks held by individuals; and network capital – consisting of the strategic and calculative relations and networks held by firms. The methodological approach consists of a quantitative analysis of data from a survey of firms operating in knowledge-intensive sectors of activity. The key findings include: social capital investment is more prevalent among firms frequently interacting with actors from within their own region; social capital investment is related to the size of firms; firm size plays a role in knowledge network patterns; and network dynamism is an important source of innovation. Overall, firms investing more in the development of their inter-firm and other external knowledge networks enjoy higher levels of innovation. It is suggested that an over-reliance on social capital forms of network resource investment may hinder the capability of firms to manage their knowledge networks. It is concluded that the link between a dynamic inter-firm network environment and innovation provides an alternative thesis to that advocating the advantage of network stability

Governance: public governance to social innovation?

ArticleThis paper reviews governance and public governance related to an emerging area of policy interest – social innovation. The European Commission’s White Paper on European Governance (2001) focused on openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence in public policy as characteristics of good governance. The EC has prioritised social innovation to address policy problems. Yet, the extant literature and research on social innovation is sparse. The paper questions whether it is a new mode of governance which contributes to good governance or a continuum of neoliberal reforms of the state which alters the relationship between the state, market and civil society

Mapping GDP growth in the East Midlands and Yorkshire & Humber

This report outlines the findings of a study examining the economic structure and dynamics of the East Midlands and Yorkshire and Humber regions of the UK, using the logic of firm and labour agglomerations and their contribution to GDP as the basis for the analysis. 1.2 The project was undertaken by the Enterprise Research and Development Unit (ERDU) at the University of Lincoln. The main aim of the project was to examine GDP growth in the two regions in order to understand the dynamics and structure of regional economic activity and explore the implications for regional development. 1.3 Because GDP provides a value for an economy’s output, changes in GDP can highlight the changing state of a region’s economy. Thus, GDP provides a benchmark for the performance of an economy which will be comparable across nations and regions. 1.4 While it is a useful indicator, GDP can be viewed as a set of figures which are the result of an accounting procedure. This reporting of figures covers the dynamics of an economy in that we know the end result, i.e. the total value of the economy but lack an understanding of how that figure is generated. What is also required is an understanding of the structure of an economy and how this may affect changes in GDP. 1.5 The approach adopted in this study has been to ‘decompose’ GDP in order to understand its component parts and link this to the structure of a regional economy. In doing this we depart from a traditional ‘macroeconomic’ analysis in that the report also examines policy interventions and the geographic structure of the two region’s economies. 1.6 As there are many actors and policy initiatives within a region, it made sense to consider a sample of these organisations to acquire a sense and ‘flavour’ of the different and distinctive approaches undertaken. GDP Growth in the East Midlands and Yorkshire & Humber Page 9 of 104 1.7 While the size of regional economies dwarfs the budgets of regional, and sub- regional, agencies involved in policy development and intervention, organisations can play important stimulus, leverage and demonstration roles in regional economic development. For example, a programme that involves expenditure of £1m will not make a large contribution to a region with GDP of £60bn. However, if the results of the programme improve the productivity of the workforce then there will be ‘knock-on’ impacts. Keynes termed these ‘multiplier effects’ and can be an important source of regional economic growth. 1.8 Good and effective practice is also likely to stimulate improvements in practice, and hence impact and knock-on effects, throughout a region (and vice-versa), indicating the importance of development organisations and the premium that can be placed on ensuring their effectiveness and impact. 1.9 The five main goals of the project are to: • Develop an outline framework of a regional economy in order to understand the relevant actors and processes within regions; • Summarise and evaluate existing data on both regional economies; • Identify the sub-regional ‘building blocks’ of the regions, i.e. the location of economic activity and the reasons underpinning this; • Map and assess strategic interventions in the regions in order to evaluate the effects of policy interventions on the regional economies; • Develop a framework for measuring the impact of interventions on GD

Origin of the transient unpulsed radio emission from the PSR B1259-63 binary system

We discuss the interpretation of transient, unpulsed radio emission detected from the unique pulsar/Be-star binary system PSR B1259-63. Extensive monitoring of the 1994 and 1997 periastron passages has shown that the source flares over a 100-day interval around periastron, varying on time-scales as short as a day and peaking at 60 mJy (~100 times the apastron flux density) at 1.4 GHz. Interpreting the emission as synchrotron radiation, we show that (i) the observed variations in flux density are too large to be caused by the shock interaction between the pulsar wind and an isotropic, radiatively driven, Be-star wind, and (ii) the radio emitting electrons do not originate from the pulsar wind. We argue instead that the radio electrons originate from the circumstellar disk of the Be star and are accelerated at two epochs, one before and one after periastron, when the pulsar passes through the disk. A simple model incorporating two epochs of impulsive acceleration followed by synchrotron cooling reproduces the essential features of the radio light curve and spectrum and is consistent with the system geometry inferred from pulsed radio data.Comment: To be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters 7 pages, 1 postscript figur

Drivers of university–industry links : the case of knowledge-intensive business service firms in rural locations

Establishing collaborative links with universities is a difficult task with an uncertain outcome and influenced by many factors including location, geographic distance, compatibility of interests, shared understanding and prior experience of collaboration. Drawing on an analysis of knowledge-intensive business service firms (KIBS) located in predominantly rural districts of the UK, this paper examines the influences on partner selection when developing formal university linkage through knowledge transfer partnerships. The findings indicate that both geographic and organizational proximity are significantly associated with partner choice, indicating that the formation of university–industry links is the result not only of spatial factors but also of prior experience of collaboration

The min-conflicts heuristic: Experimental and theoretical results

This paper describes a simple heuristic method for solving large-scale constraint satisfaction and scheduling problems. Given an initial assignment for the variables in a problem, the method operates by searching through the space of possible repairs. The search is guided by an ordering heuristic, the min-conflicts heuristic, that attempts to minimize the number of constraint violations after each step. We demonstrate empirically that the method performs orders of magnitude better than traditional backtracking techniques on certain standard problems. For example, the one million queens problem can be solved rapidly using our approach. We also describe practical scheduling applications where the method has been successfully applied. A theoretical analysis is presented to explain why the method works so well on certain types of problems and to predict when it is likely to be most effective

An extended abstract: A heuristic repair method for constraint-satisfaction and scheduling problems

The work described in this paper was inspired by a surprisingly effective neural network developed for scheduling astronomical observations on the Hubble Space Telescope. Our heuristic constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) method was distilled from an analysis of the network. In the process of carrying out the analysis, we discovered that the effectiveness of the network has little to do with its connectionist implementation. Furthermore, the ideas employed in the network can be implemented very efficiently within a symbolic CSP framework. The symbolic implementation is extremely simple. It also has the advantage that several different search strategies can be employed, although we have found that hill-climbing methods are particularly well-suited for the applications that we have investigated. We begin the paper with a brief review of the neural network. Following this, we describe our symbolic method for heuristic repair

Aspirin inhibits the acute venodilator response to furosemide in patients with chronic heart failure

OBJECTIVES: We sought to determine the effect of aspirin on the venodilator effect of furosemide in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF) BACKGROUND: Furosemide has an acute venodilator effect preceding its diuretic action, which is blocked by nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. The ability of therapeutic doses of aspirin to block this effect of furosemide in patients with CHF has not been studied. For comparison, the venodilator response to nitroglycerin (NTG) was also studied. METHODS: Eleven patients with CHF were randomized to receive placebo, aspirin at 75 mg/day or aspirin at 300 mg/day for 14 days in a double-blind, crossover study. The effect of these pretreatments on the change in forearm venous capacitance (FVC) after 20 mg of intravenous furosemide was measured over 20 min by using venous occlusion plethysmography. In a second study, the effect of 400 μg of sublingual NTG on FVC was documented in 11 similar patients (nine participated in the first study). RESULTS: Mean arterial pressure, heart rate and forearm blood flow did not change in response to furosemide. After placebo pretreatment, furosemide caused an increase in FVC of 2.2% (95% confidence interval [CI] −0.9% to 5.2%; mean response over 20 min). By comparison, FVC fell by −1.1% (95% CI −4.2% to 1.9%) after pretreatment with aspirin at 75 mg/day, and by −3.7% (95% CI −6.8% to −0.7%) after aspirin at 300 mg/day (p = 0.020). In the second study, NTG increased FVC by 2.1% (95% CI −1.6% to 5.8%) (p = 0.95 vs. furosemide). CONCLUSIONS: In patients with CHF, venodilation occurs within minutes of the administration of intravenous dose of furosemide. Our observation that aspirin inhibits this effect further questions the use of aspirin in patients with CHF

What's Cookin'? Interpreting Cooking Videos using Text, Speech and Vision

We present a novel method for aligning a sequence of instructions to a video of someone carrying out a task. In particular, we focus on the cooking domain, where the instructions correspond to the recipe. Our technique relies on an HMM to align the recipe steps to the (automatically generated) speech transcript. We then refine this alignment using a state-of-the-art visual food detector, based on a deep convolutional neural network. We show that our technique outperforms simpler techniques based on keyword spotting. It also enables interesting applications, such as automatically illustrating recipes with keyframes, and searching within a video for events of interest.Comment: To appear in NAACL 201