Determinants of Success of the Open Source Selective Revealing Strategy: Solution Knowledge Emergence

Recent research suggests that firms may be able to create a competitive advantage by deliberately revealing specific problem knowledge beyond firm boundaries to open source meta-organisations such that new solution knowledge is created that benefits the focal firm more than its competitors (Alexy, George, & Salter, 2013). Yet, not all firms that use knowledge revealing strategies are successful in inducing the emergence of solution knowledge. The extant literature has as of yet not explained this heterogeneity in success of knowledge revealing strategies. Using a longitudinal database spanning the period from 1998 to end 2012 with more than 2 billion data points that was obtained from the Mozilla Foundation, one of the top open source meta-organisations, this dissertation identifies and measures the antecedent factors affecting successful solution knowledge emergence. The results reveal 35 antecedent factors that affect solution knowledge emergence in different ways across three levels of analysis. The numerous contributions to theory and practice that follow from the results are discussed

Making Consumer Knowledge Available and Useful the case of the Computer Games Industry

It has been demonstrated that users occasionally innovate. However, it can now be observed that even end-consumers act as a source novel product designs. A case study of a firm, and “its” consumers - from the computer games industry - illustrates how sourcing of consumer knowledge has enabled the firm to improve product design. Two conditions favor the results firms can obtain from consumer’s knowledge. First, is firm’s ability to exploit new opportunities of information and communication technology - on-line communities - to establish interfaces connecting them with consumers. Second, is firm’s ability to initiate a mode of organization by which the consumers are guided and motivated to reveal merely relevant knowledge.Innovation, Consumers, On-line communities, Computer games

Cybersecurity Information Sharing: Analysing an Email Corpus of Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure

Cybersecurity Information Sharing: Analysing an Email Corpus of Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure. K Sridhar, A Householder, JM Spring, DW Woods. The 20th Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS 2021

Turning Exploration (R&D) into a Sustainable Business Model

Nevada Exploration Inc. (“NGE”) is a public exploration company that has developed new technology to identify gold exploration projects in Nevada’s valleys where the bedrock is covered. Covered bedrock settings challenge conventional exploration tools and NGE’s technology represents a significant improvement; however, because the technology is still new, NGE has had a hard time attracting buyers for its projects. Instead, NGE has advanced its exploration targets in house, which has proven costly and dilutive to shareholders. This paper examines how NGE creates value to focus NGE’s efforts on activities that maximize the likelihood and degree to which its shareholders participate in a gold discovery. This paper concludes the best way for NGE to create value is to limit its activities to the early project generation stages of the industry value chain where it can leverage its technology to identify new projects better and cheaper than its rivals

Ex Ante and Ex Post Investments in Cybersecurity

This paper develops a theory of sequential investments in cybersecurity in which the software vendor can invest ex ante and ex post. The regulator can use safety standards and liability rules as means of increasing security. A standard is a minimum level of safety, and a liability rule states the amount of damage each party is liable for. I show that the joint use of an optimal standard and a full liability rule leads to underinvestment ex ante and overinvestment ex post because the software vendor does not suffer the full costs of the society in case of security failure. Instead, switching to a partial liability rule can correct the inefficiencies. This suggests that to improve security, the regulator should encourage not only the firms, but also the enterprises to invest in security. I also discuss the effect of network externality and explain why firms engage in "vaporware"

Spatial and temporal stability of weed patches in cereal fields under direct drilling and harrow tillage

The adoption of conservation agriculture (CA) techniques by farmers is changing the dynamics of weed communities in cereal fields and so potentially their spatial distribution. These changes can challenge the use of site-specific weed control, which is based on the accurate location of weed patches for spraying. We studied the effect of two types of CA (direct drilling and harrow-tilled to 20 cm) on weed patches in a three-year survey in four direct-drilled and three harrow-tilled commercial fields in Catalonia (North-eastern Spain). The area of the ground covered by weeds (hereafter called “weed cover”) was estimated at 96 to 122 points measured in each year in each field, in 50 cm × 50 cm quadrats placed in a 10 m × 10 m grid in spring. Bromus diandrus, Lolium rigidum, and Papaver rhoeas were the main weed species. The weed cover and degree of aggregation for all species varied both between and within fields, regardless of the kind of tillage. Under both forms of soil management all three were aggregated in elongated patterns in the direction of traffic. Bromus was generally more aggregated than Lolium, and both were more aggregated than Papaver. Patches were stable over time for only two harrow-tilled fields with Lolium and one direct-drilled field with Bromus, but not in the other fields. Spatial stability of the weeds was more pronounced in the direction of traffic. Herbicide applications, crop rotation, and traffic seem to affect weed populations strongly within fields, regardless of the soil management. We conclude that site-specific herbicides can be applied to control these species because they are aggregated, although the patches would have to be identified afresh in each season.This research was funded by the Spanish National Program (project: AGL2010-22084-C02-0). A.E.M. was funded by the Institute Strategic Programme (ISP) grants, “Soils to Nutrition” (S2N) grant number BBS/E/C/000I0330, and the joint Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) ISP grant “Achieving Sustainable Agricultural Systems” (ASSIST) grant number BBS/E/C/000I0100, using facilities funded by the BBSRC

Organic Cation Transporter 3: A Cellular Mechanism Underlying Rapid, Non-Genomic Glucocorticoid Regulation of Monoaminergic Neurotransmission, Physiology, and Behavior

Corticosteroid hormones act at intracellular glucocorticoid receptors (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptors (MR) to alter gene expression, leading to diverse physiological and behavioral responses. In addition to these classical genomic effects, corticosteroid hormones also exert rapid actions on physiology and behavior through a variety of non-genomic mechanisms, some of which involve GR or MR, and others of which are independent of these receptors. One such GR-independent mechanism involves corticosteroid-induced inhibition of monoamine transport mediated by “uptake2” transporters, including organic cation transporter 3 (OCT3), a low-affinity, high-capacity transporter for norepinephrine, epinephrine, dopamine, serotonin and histamine. Corticosterone directly and acutely inhibits OCT3-mediated transport. This review describes the studies that initially characterized uptake2 processes in peripheral tissues, and outlines studies that demonstrated OCT3 expression and corticosterone-sensitive monoamine transport in the brain. Evidence is presented supporting the hypothesis that corticosterone can exert rapid, GR-independent actions on neuronal physiology and behavior by inhibiting OCT3-mediated monoamine clearance. Implications of this mechanism for glucocorticoid-monoamine interactions in the context-dependent regulation of behavior are discussed

Managing The Full Erp Life-Cycle: Considerations Of Maintenance And Support Requirements And It Governance Practice As Integral Elements Of The Formula For Successful Erp Adoption

Companies adopting enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have often focused primarily on implementation-related factors while neglecting those of post-implementation. As a result, the usefulness and operation of the ERP systems, once installed, are compromised. This research adopted a case study approach to demonstrate that ERP adoption efforts that fail to pay attention to post- implementation requirements (especially those relevant to maintenance and support (M&S)) from an early stage in the project lifecycle will face dire consequences. It points out that poor planning and management of M&S services can imperil the normal operations of an ERP system and the daily activities of a business. With the life span of ERP systems getting shorter, sound M&S practices can extend their life and create a stable system platform to support efficient and effective business operations. M&S issues deserve to be considered as integral elements among the critical success factors (CSF) of ERP adoption projects. In other words, ERP success requires a full lifecycle perspective to be taken by adopting companies. With lessons having been learned from the mistakes in the first project, the company in this case study revamped its ERP implementation second time out, with due consideration being given to M&S strategies and practices from project initiation onward in order to realize a stable, usable, and maintainable system. The case study explores and identifies the critical success factors (CSF) of ERP adoption, and shows that M&S must be included as a key element from the outset and throughout the system lifecycle. Our findings capture a great deal of experience for any ERP adopting companies to follow in order to avoid learning costly lessons both in implementation and subsequent M&S throughout the lifespan of the system. A set of propositions is also presented for academic researcher to consider in future ERP research endeavors

Long-Term Bias

An emerging consensus in certain legal, business, and scholarly communities maintains that corporate managers are pressured unduly into chasing short-term gains at the expense of superior long-term prospects. The forces inducing managerial myopia are easy to spot, typically embodied by activist hedge funds and Wall Street gadflies with outsized appetites for next quarter’s earnings. Warnings about the dangers of “short termism” have become so well established, in fact, that they are now driving changes to mainstream practice, as courts, regulators and practitioners fashion legal and transactional constraints designed to insulate firms and managers from the influence of investor short-termism. This Article draws on academic research and a series of case studies to advance the thesis that the emergent folk wisdom about short-termism is incomplete. A growing literature in behavioral finance and psychology now provides sound reasons to conclude that corporate managers often fall prey to long-term bias – excessive optimism about their own long-term projects. We illustrate several plausible instantiations of such biases using case studies from three prominent companies where managers have arguably succumbed to a form of “long-termism” in their own corporate stewardship. Unchecked, long-termism can impose substantial costs on investors that are every bit as damaging as short-termism. Moreover, we argue that long-term managerial bias sheds considerable light on the paradox of why short-termism evidently persists among supposedly sophisticated financial market participants: Shareholder activism – even if unambiguously myopic – can provide a symbiotic counter-ballast against managerial long-termism. Without a more definitive understanding of the interaction between short- and long-term biases, then, policymakers should be cautious about embracing reforms that focus solely on half of the problem