The impact of M&A activity on innovation in the pharmaceutical industry

The present Work Project discusses the answer from Deloitte to a proposal raised by the European Commission on Mergers and acquisitions and its impact on innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. A theoretical approach on the subject was performed through a literature review and the foundation of a statistical approach was laid by developing a methodology for the study as well as defining statistical parameters suited for the research

The offshore services value chain : developing countries and the crisis

This paper analyzes the recent evolution and impact of the global economic crisis on the offshore services industry. Using a global value chains framework, the authors classify the offshore services sector in a comprehensive set of general and industry-specific activities that correspond to different segments and stages in the value-adding process for services. Through an analysis of the impact of the economic crisis on the industry, a small decline in demand was found; however this did not cause any structural changes in the market. The crisis has created two opposing effects: general contraction of demand by existing customers due to the recession; and, at the same time, a substitution effect by which new services are being moved from developed countries to emerging economies in search of cost reduction. The paper concludes that the offshore services industry will continue to offer growth opportunities for developing countries not only among existing market players, but also a range of new countries. The industry has the potential to become an important source for employment and economic growth around the globe.ICT Policy and Strategies,E-Business,Water and Industry,Housing&Human Habitats,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures

The Illusion of the Perpetual Money Machine

We argue that the present crisis and stalling economy continuing since 2007 are rooted in the delusionary belief in policies based on a "perpetual money machine" type of thinking. We document strong evidence that, since the early 1980s, consumption has been increasingly funded by smaller savings, booming financial profits, wealth extracted from house price appreciation and explosive debt. This is in stark contrast with the productivity-fueled growth that was seen in the 1950s and 1960s. This transition, starting in the early 1980s, was further supported by a climate of deregulation and a massive growth in financial derivatives designed to spread and diversify the risks globally. The result has been a succession of bubbles and crashes, including the worldwide stock market bubble and great crash of October 1987, the savings and loans crisis of the 1980s, the burst in 1991 of the enormous Japanese real estate and stock market bubbles, the emerging markets bubbles and crashes in 1994 and 1997, the LTCM crisis of 1998, the dotcom bubble bursting in 2000, the recent house price bubbles, the financialization bubble via special investment vehicles, the stock market bubble, the commodity and oil bubbles and the debt bubbles, all developing jointly and feeding on each other. Rather than still hoping that real wealth will come out of money creation, we need fundamentally new ways of thinking. In uncertain times, it is essential, more than ever, to think in scenarios: what can happen in the future, and, what would be the effect on your wealth and capital? How can you protect against adverse scenarios? We thus end by examining the question "what can we do?" from the macro level, discussing the fundamental issue of incentives and of constructing and predicting scenarios as well as developing investment insights.Comment: 27 pages, 18 figures (Notenstein Academy White Paper Series

Vision Experts: “Capturing the Holy Grail” Business Plan

This project investigates the potential viability of commercializing robotics software developed by a UBC engineer. The aim of this project is to provide the inventor with a business plan that will act as a tool to help in obtaining funding for the commercialization of this software. Through research and work, it has been concluded that the possibility does exist to use this software as the basis for a successful company. To that end, a business plan is presented with the goal of helping the developer achieve her goals

RIO Country Report 2017: Bulgaria

The R&I Observatory Country Report 2017 provides a brief analysis of the R&I system covering the economic context, main actors, funding trends & human resources, policies to address R&I challenges, and R&I in national and regional smart specialisation processes. Data is provided by Eurostat, unless otherwise referenced, and is up-to-date as of February 2018. Data based upon other international sources is also cited and dated as available in February 2018. The report aims to analyse the state of play of the national R&I system and its challenges, including in support of the European Semester exercise.JRC.B.7-Knowledge for Finance, Innovation and Growt

Robotic Process Automation: a review of organizational grey literature

Research on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in the last decade has increased but lags behind developments in practice. This study explores the definition, evolution and categories of RPA, its benefits and challenges, identifies guidelines for implementation and provides a future outlook. Since there is an evident scarcity of comprehensive grey literature reviews in the area, this study presents an extensive narrative review of organizational grey literature on RPA by analyzing sixty-one organizational reports and white papers published between 2015 and 2020. This study provides a unified definition of RPA and groups the many categories of RPA into three types: basic automation, cognitive automation, and artificial intelligence. The study identifies the benefits of RPA and categorizes them into monetary; simplicity; efficiency and productivity; flexibility and scalability; reliability and consistency; compliance and governance; customer satisfaction; employee efficiency; and other long-term organizational benefits. The main challenges of RPA are awareness and perception of RPA; uncertainty about how to prepare for RPA; change management challenges while implementing RPA; and challenges associated with RPA vendors. Three main steps of RPA implementation are highlighted. This study provides practitioners and researchers with an extensive bird’s eye insight into RPA from an industry perspective

Tracking economic growth by evolving expectations via genetic programming: a two-step approach

The main objective of this study is to present a two-step approach to generate estimates of economic growth based on agents’ expectations from tendency surveys. First, we design a genetic programming experiment to derive mathematical functional forms that approximate the target variable by combining survey data on expectations about different economic variables. We use evolutionary algorithms to estimate a symbolic regression that links survey-based expectations to a quantitative variable used as a yardstick (economic growth). In a second step, this set of empirically-generated proxies of economic growth are linearly combined to track the evolution of GDP. To evaluate the forecasting performance of the generated estimates of GDP, we use them to assess the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on the accuracy of agents’ expectations about the evolution of the economic activity in 28 countries of the OECD. While in most economies we find an improvement in the capacity of agents’ to anticipate the evolution of GDP after the crisis, predictive accuracy worsens in relation to the period prior to the crisis. The most accurate GDP forecasts are obtained for Sweden, Austria and Finland.Preprin

Robotic Process Automation: a review of organizational grey literature

Research on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in the last decade has increased but lags behind developments in practice. This study explores the definition, evolution and categories of RPA, its benefits and challenges, identifies guidelines for implementation and provides a future outlook. Since there is an evident scarcity of comprehensive grey literature reviews in the area, this study presents an extensive narrative review of organizational grey literature on RPA by analyzing sixty-one organizational reports and white papers published between 2015 and 2020. This study provides a unified definition of RPA and groups the many categories of RPA into three types: basic automation, cognitive automation, and artificial intelligence. The study identifies the benefits of RPA and categorizes them into monetary; simplicity; efficiency and productivity; flexibility and scalability; reliability and consistency; compliance and governance; customer satisfaction; employee efficiency; and other long-term organizational benefits. The main challenges of RPA are awareness and perception of RPA; uncertainty about how to prepare for RPA; change management challenges while implementing RPA; and challenges associated with RPA vendors. Three main steps of RPA implementation are highlighted. This study provides practitioners and researchers with an extensive bird’s eye insight into RPA from an industry perspective

Ahead of the Curve: Insights for the International NGO of the Future

International NGOs have a unique and important role to play in addressing today's complex global challenges. But few of them are living up to their full potential. With support from the Hewlett Foundation, FSG researched how the most innovative INGOs are adapting to the disruptions in the global development sector and embracing four approaches to create greater impact