Articulating Problems and Markets: A Translation Analysis of Entrepreneurs’ Emergent Value Propositions

In this qualitative study, the authors apply Callon’s sociology of translation to examine how new technology entrepreneurs enact material arguments that involve the first two moments of translation—problematization (defining a market problem) and interessement (defining a market and the firm’s relationship to it) - which in turn are represented in a claim, the value proposition. That emergent claim can then be represented and further changed during pitches. If accepted, it can then lead to the second two moments of translation: enrollment and mobilization. Drawing on written materials, observations, and interviews, we trace how these value propositions were iterated along three paths to better problematize and interesse, articulating a problem and market on which a business could plausibly be built. We conclude by discussing implications for understanding value propositions in entrepreneurship and, more broadly, using the sociology of translation to analyze emergent, material, consequential arguments. The study is based on data collected at the Austin Technology Incubator’s Student Entrepreneur Acceleration and Launch program (ATI SEAL) at The University of Texas at Austin.IC2 Institut

Race to the Bottom? The Presidential Candidates' Positions on Trade

In recent weeks the economy has been in the headlines and in the sights of politicians seeking the presidency. Particularly on the Democratic side, the candidates have sought to paint a picture of a doom-and-gloom economy and a convenient culprit: the trade policies of the Bush administration. Although Sen. John McCain has largely stuck to his free-trade principles, even when it might have been politically expedient to appeal to voters' worst instincts, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have entered into a seemingly escalating war of words over the alleged damage done by trade liberalization. As news about the economy worsened and crucial primary contests in industrial states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania approached, the rhetoric reached a nadir. As voters consider the mix of policy offerings by the candidates, a look at their records on trade during their time in Congress and their statements during the campaign can give some early guidance as to the direction of the next administration's trade policy. Although trade votes are a necessarily imperfect yardstick with which to measure future policy -- packaged as they often are with other, sometimes contradictory, legislation -- they seem to be consistent with the campaign pledges of the candidates.Voters could expect a President Mc-Cain to promote freer trade and cuts in market-distorting subsidies, and a President Clinton or a President Obama to view free trade between voluntary actors as somethin

SOA-Driven Business-Software Alignment

The alignment of business processes and their supporting application software is a major concern during the initial software design phases. This paper proposes a design approach addressing this problem of business-software alignment. The approach takes an initial business model as a basis in deriving refined models that target a service-oriented software implementation. The approach explicitly identifies a software modeling level at which software modules are represented as services in a technology-platformindependent way. This model-driven service-oriented approach has the following properties: (i) there is a forced alignment (consistency) between business processes and supporting applications; (ii) changes in the business environment can be traced to the application and vice versa, via model relationships; (iii) the software modules modeled as services have a high degree of autonomy; (iv) migration to new technology platforms can be supported through the platform independent software model

Developing an Effective Enforcement System for a Marine Reserve in the Pitcairn Islands

This paper details how monitoring and enforcement of the Pitcairn Island's exclusive economic zone could be effectively undertaken for a relatively low level of expenditure. It is important to note that there is no such thing as perfect enforcement, although, in general, the greater the funds available, the closer to perfection an enforcement system is likely to get. This paper does not attempt to detail how near-to-perfect enforcement might be achieved because establishing such a system would be far too costly to be a realistic policy option. Rather, it outlines the most important steps that could be taken to create a robust enforcement system and reviews some affordable technologies that could be deployed to support it. Creating a marine reserve and deploying these relatively low-cost options would protect Pitcairn Islands' exclusive economic zone far better than it currently is, and far better than the vast majority of oceans worldwide. These actions would distinguish the United Kingdom as a world leader in responsible stewardship of the marine environment

Transmission Pricing of Distributed Multilateral Energy Transactions to Ensure System Security and Guide Economic Dispatch

Transmission Pricing of Distributed Multilateral Energy Transactions to Ensure System Security and Guide Economic Dispatc

Supporting public decision making in policy deliberations: An ontological approach

This is the post-print version of the Paper. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 SpringerSupporting public decision making in policy deliberations has been a key objective of eParticipation which is an emerging area of eGovernment. EParticipation aims to enhance citizen involvement in public governance activities through the use of information and communication technologies. An innovative approach towards this objective is exploiting the potentials of semantic web technologies centred on conceptual knowledge models in the form of ontologies. Ontologies are generally defined as explicit human and computer shared views on the world of particular domains. In this paper, the potentials and benefits of using ontologies for policy deliberation processes are discussed. Previous work is then extended and synthesised to develop a deliberation ontology. The ontology aims to define the necessary semantics in order to structure and interrelate the stages and various activities of deliberation processes with legal information, participant stakeholders and their associated arguments. The practical implications of the proposed framework are illustrated.This work is funded by the European Commission under the 2006/1 eParticipation call

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research