Entrepreneurship as a process of collective exploration

Clarifies the potentials of the notion of exploration for the analysis of the uncertain and collective nature of entrepreneurship, and provides detailed examination of a case study on a French academic spin-off.entrepreneurship; exploration; opportunity recognition; partnerships

California: Round 1 - State-Level Field Network Study of the Implementation of the Affordable Care Act

This report is part of a series of 21 state and regional studies examining the rollout of the ACA. The national network -- with 36 states and 61 researchers -- is led by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York, the Brookings Institution, and the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.In September 2010, six months after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, California became the first state in the nation to create its own insurance exchange, eventually named Covered California. This accelerated timeline was consistent with California's desire to be, in the words of the state's Health and Human Services Secretary and Exchange Board Chair Diana Dooley, the "lead car" in implementation of federal health care reform. Because of the speed with which it approached this task, as well as the sheer size of its coverage expansion, the decisions California has made have been influential both regionally and nationally. What has transpired in the state has had implications for other states as they addressed difficult issues, including minimizing adverse selection, promoting cost-conscious consumer choice, and seamlessly coordinating with public programs

Local skirmishes in the contruction of (global) digital business communication technologies

This paper applies Latour’s 1992 translation map as a device to explore the development of and recent conflict between two data standards for the exchange of business information – EDIFACT and XBRL. Our research is focussed in France, where EDIFACT is well established and XBRL is just emerging. The alliances supporting both standards are local and global. The French/European EDIFACT is promulgated through the United Nations while a consortium of national jurisdictions and companies has coalesced around the US initiated XBRL International (XII). We suggest cultural differences pose a barrier to co-operation between the two networks. Competing data standards create the risk of switching costs. The different technical characteristics of the standards are identified as raising implications for regulators and users. A key concern is the lack of co-ordination of data standard production and the mechanisms regulatory agencies use to choose platforms for electronic data submission

Free Technology Academy : a Joint Venture of Free Software and OER

The decision to publish educational materials openly and under free licenses brings up the challenge of doing it in a sustainable way. Some lessons can be learned from the business models for production, maintenance and distribution of Free and Open Source Software. The Free Technology Academy (FTA) has taken on these challenges and has implemented some of these models. We briefly review the FTA educational programme, methodologies and organisation, and see to which extent these models are proving successful in the case of the FTA