Mixed Signals: Why investors may misjudge first time high technology founders

This paper seeks to explain an unexpected result of a previous quantitative study which suggested sub-optimal evaluation by investors of the human capital of first time high tech venture founders. A literature review revealed two possible reasons for this finding: biases/heuristics and signaling. Six investors across three countries (one venture capitalist and one business angel each from the US, UK and Israel) with experience in investing in early stage high technology ventures were interviewed using an identical semi-structured interview protocol. This research design is appropriate for research that seeks to reflect back unexpected findings of previous quantitative research on the subjects of research. Interviewees were first asked to state their own investment criteria, and then presented with the results of the quantitative study and asked for their views. Previous research suggesting a gap between in-use and espoused criteria, and extensive use of gut feeling in decision-making, was supported. Interviewees focused on harvest potential and de-emphasised measures of founder technology capability that predicted early survival and growth in the earlier study. The paper concludes by suggesting how investors might improve funding decisions in high tech ventures led by first-time entrepreneurs, noting the study's limitations and making recommendations for further research

Financing Swedish Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: Methods, Problems and Impact

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are the seeds for a vital entrepreneurial economy. The Swedish SMEs, in particular, are very important for the future development of the Baltic Region. Financing these firms is an issue of great significance and a subject to care for. In this paper, we looked at established financing methods for Swedish SMEs. We also analyzed the impact of these methods on firm survivability using the Survival Index Value (SIV) model. The SIV model is a new tool to evaluate small firm performance, introduced recently by Dr. Adli Abouzeedan. Keywords: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, SMEs, SIV model, Financing, Debt Financing, Equity Financing, Banks, Factoring, Disintermediation, Venture Capital, Angles, Swedish, Sweden, North Europe, European Union, EU, Baltic Region

Spaceborne power systems preference analyses. Volume 2: Decision analysis

Sixteen alternative spaceborne nuclear power system concepts were ranked using multiattribute decision analysis. The purpose of the ranking was to identify promising concepts for further technology development and the issues associated with such development. Four groups were interviewed to obtain preference. The four groups were: safety, systems definition and design, technology assessment, and mission analysis. The highest ranked systems were the heat-pipe thermoelectric systems, heat-pipe Stirling, in-core thermionic, and liquid-metal thermoelectric systems. The next group contained the liquid-metal Stirling, heat-pipe Alkali Metal Thermoelectric Converter (AMTEC), heat-pipe Brayton, liquid-metal out-of-core thermionic, and heat-pipe Rankine systems. The least preferred systems were the liquid-metal AMTEC, heat-pipe thermophotovoltaic, liquid-metal Brayton and Rankine, and gas-cooled Brayton. The three nonheat-pipe technologies selected matched the top three nonheat-pipe systems ranked by this study

Corporate financing decisions: UK survey evidence

Despite theoretical developments in recent years, our understanding of corporate capital structure remains incomplete. Prior empirical research has been dominated by archival regression studies which are limited in their ability to fully reflect the diversity found in practice. The present paper reports on a comprehensive survey of corporate financing decision-making in UK listed companies. A key finding is that firms are heterogeneous in their capital structure policies. About half of the firms seek to maintain a target debt level, consistent with trade-off theory, but 60 per cent claim to follow a financing hierarchy, consistent with pecking order theory. These two theories are not viewed by respondents as either mutually exclusive or exhaustive. Many of the theoretical determinants of debt levels are widely accepted by respondents, in particular the importance of interest tax shield, financial distress, agency costs and also, at least implicitly, information asymmetry. Results also indicate that cross-country institutional differences have a significant impact on financial decisions

Competition and collaboration in supply chains: an agent-based modelling approach

Competition has been considered as an effective means to improve business and economic competitiveness. However, competition in supply chain management (SCM) can be viewed as a source of uncertainty. Most recommended collaboration strategies in SCM literature tend to avoid the emergence of competition inside the supply chain, but, in reality, these strategies do not lead all supply chains to success. In addition, from strategic management perspective, these collaboration strategies are not believed to encourage firms to improve their performance. Both competition and collaboration are critical issues in achieving business success, but the effect of both factors on the market has not been explored concurrently in the literature. The complexity of this issue should be investigated using a comprehensive perspective, and it is hard to undertake by using an empirical approach. [Continues.

Can Domestication of Wildlife Lead to Conservation? The Economics of Tiger Farming in China

Tigers are a threatened species that might soon disappear in the wild. Not only are tigers threatened by deteriorating and declining habitat, but poachers continue to kill tigers for traditional medicine, decoration pieces and so on. Although international trade in tiger products has been banned since 1987 and domestic trade within China since 1993, tigers continue to be poached and Chinese entrepreneurs have established tiger farms in anticipation of their demise. While China desires to permit sale of tiger products from captive-bred tigers, this is opposed on the grounds that it likely encourages illegal killing. Instead, wildlife conservationists lobby for more spending on anti-poaching and trade-ban enforcement. In this study, a mathematical bioeconomic model is used to investigate the issue. Simulation results indicate that, unless range states are characterized by institutions (rule of law, low corruption) similar to those found in the richest countries, reliance on enforcement alone is insufficient to guarantee survival of wild tigers. Likewise, even though conservation payments could protect wild tigers, the inability to enforce contracts militates against this. Our model indicates that wild tigers can be protected by permitting sale of products from tiger farms, although this likely requires the granting of an exclusive license to sellers. Finally, it is possible to tradeoff enforcement effort and sale of products from captive-bred animals, but such tradeoffs are worsened by deteriorating tiger habitat.endangered species, extinction, wildlife farming and bioeconomics

Consciosusness in Cognitive Architectures. A Principled Analysis of RCS, Soar and ACT-R

This report analyses the aplicability of the principles of consciousness developed in the ASys project to three of the most relevant cognitive architectures. This is done in relation to their aplicability to build integrated control systems and studying their support for general mechanisms of real-time consciousness.\ud To analyse these architectures the ASys Framework is employed. This is a conceptual framework based on an extension for cognitive autonomous systems of the General Systems Theory (GST).\ud A general qualitative evaluation criteria for cognitive architectures is established based upon: a) requirements for a cognitive architecture, b) the theoretical framework based on the GST and c) core design principles for integrated cognitive conscious control systems

Risk-based system to control safety level of flooded passenger ships

Predicting the consequences of flooding is a key issue that may help the ship master of a large passenger ship to make rational decisions in emergency situations. To this end, the Delphi Emergency Decision Support System (Delphi EDSS) has been designed and is under implementation to continuously assess ship's state of survivability. Analyses are performed by means of a time-domain simulation program, where transient stages of flooding are investigated and stored off-line for all the potential damage scenarios. The Delphi EDSS evaluates the ship risk level including the most important aspects related to safety state while establishing the time-to-capsize which is of primary concern for the safe evacuation of the damaged ship. The methodology is based on a scientific approach, setting an overall platform for rational assessment of non-survivability risk. Determination of the global risk level and its components requires solution of a multicriterial problem, where the level of importance of each criterion contributing to determination of a global risk index is combined with fuzzified contributors to risk calculated at lower levels

Male Dominance and Sexual Selection in the Crayfish Orconectes quinebaugensis

In many taxa, social structures are mediated by agonistic interactions and the formation of dominance hierarchies. In crayfish, dominance hierarchies may have evolved as a result sexual selection, allowing dominant males greater access to females, thereby increasing their reproductive success. This work tests the hypothesis that high male investment in dominance interactions may have evolved as a result of intra- and/or inter-sexual selection pressures by testing specific predictions in two parts: first, that reproductive males would invest more in agonistic interactions than reproductive females or non-reproductive members of both sexes; and second, that females would prefer odors of dominant males over subordinates, and that dominant males would be either more efficient at mating or be able to mate longer than subordinates. Investment in agonistic interactions was examined in intrasexual pairs of male and female crayfish in both the reproductive and non-reproductive season. As predicted, reproductive males invested more in agonistic interactions overall than reproductive females, while there was no significant difference in investment by non-reproductive males or females. However, no significant difference was found in agonistic investment between reproductive males and non-reproductive males. These data indicate that investment in agonism differs by sex and by reproductive status, and may indicate that dominance interactions are under sexual selection in males. Alternatively, this differential investment may be explained by seasonal changes in the individual costs and benefits of agonism, or by depressed investment by reproductive females. Female odor preference was tested using a y-maze containing control and male treated water. For tests of male mating, time spent in each of three stages of mating was recorded for male-female pairs. Of these tests, the only significant trend produced was that dominant males spent more time associated with the female during and after copulation than subordinates. This may indicate an advantage in fertilization success for males through decreased sperm competition. A pilot study was also conducted testing the predictions that females mated to dominant males invest more in offspring than those mated to subordinates and that such offspring have greater survivability, but no significant conclusions could be drawn from these data