SMEs e-business behaviour: a demographics and strategic analysis

The aim of this research was to understand the strategic uses of e-business systems and technologies by classifying companies and particularly small and medium businesses according to demographics as well as e-business behavior variables.The study was based on data from a large quantitative survey of European E-business W@tch for the period 2007 using questionnaire interviews (N=409). We employed two-step cluster analysis, multinomial logistic regression and stepwise descriminant analysis as the most appropriate methods for our analysis. The findings revealed six clusters associated to e-business adoption. The six groups differ in terms of demographic characteristics as well as e-business applications they use. We found that the following clusters exist: (a) Leaders: large companies that extensively use ebusiness in a strategic manner (b) innovators: use e-business in an way that allows them to innovate and differentiate from other companies (c Beginners: small and medium companies across all sectors that only recently start to use e-business (d) Unready Adopters: micro and small companies that lag behind (e) Late Adopters: small-size companies but larger that the Unready Adopters, that appear not to be interest in the advances of ICTs and (f) Laggards: micro companies with little use of e-business.The results of our survey can positively contribute to managers aiming to take advantage of technological advances in electronic business as well as to any researcher who study e-business management and applications

Twenty-five years of two-dimensional rational conformal field theory

In this article we try to give a condensed panoramic view of the development of two-dimensional rational conformal field theory in the last twenty-five years.Comment: A review for the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Mathematical Physics. Some references added, typos correcte

Fibred Fibration Categories

We introduce fibred type-theoretic fibration categories which are fibred categories between categorical models of Martin-L\"{o}f type theory. Fibred type-theoretic fibration categories give a categorical description of logical predicates for identity types. As an application, we show a relational parametricity result for homotopy type theory. As a corollary, it follows that every closed term of type of polymorphic endofunctions on a loop space is homotopic to some iterated concatenation of a loop

Survey of mathematical foundations of QFT and perturbative string theory

Recent years have seen noteworthy progress in the mathematical formulation of quantum field theory and perturbative string theory. We give a brief survey of these developments. It serves as an introduction to the more detailed collection "Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Field Theory and Perturbative String Theory".Comment: This is the introduction to the upcoming volume "Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Field Theory and Perturbative String Theory", edited by the authors and published by the American Mathematical Societ