Opportunity identification and exploitation in value chains : a study of innovative food entrepreneurs in Thailand

Research focus and methodologyEntrepreneurship is a crucial behaviour that drives economic growth and to improve people’s lives. It is seen as a source of income for those who can successfully identify and exploit opportunity to create value and profit. Entrepreneurs do not act in isolation, they are part of an industry’s value chain. An Entrepreneur’s interaction with other stakeholders and the surrounding context influences the opportunity process. Entrepreneurial opportunity may occur at any stage in the value chain. Entrepreneurs all operate within a value chain and their activities are all part of value adding processes. Despite this, there are a small number of studies that consider entrepreneurs as actors within a value chain context. The roles of entrepreneurs within different parts of the value chain may therefore contribute to the literature focusing on how entrepreneurs identify and exploit opportunity.This thesis is both exploratory and qualitative and is underpinned by a critical realist paradigm. It exercises the use of numbers in a qualitative study at a quantizing level. The data collection employs a semi-structured interview technique. The interviews were taken with 35 entrepreneurs owning various firms at all scale classification (small, medium, large). The sample is drawn from entrepreneurs operating in Thai food industries, particularly in the value chains of rice and fruits. Data collection also involved 2 elites and 9 experts, who were interviewed to provide a comprehensive background of entrepreneurship with a Thai context.Finding and implicationEntrepreneurs identify opportunity by considering supply-side factors and demand-side factors. While businesses wish to be accepted by the market, but the supply-side factors appear to outweigh demand-side factors in their opportunity identification stage. Categorising entrepreneurs by firm’s size, it reveals dissimilarity in their opportunity identification process. While small firm owners emphasize on supply-side factors, the medium and large sized entrepreneurs are more focus on demand factors. Further analysis of value chain perspectives also discovers the disparity of these factors within entrepreneurs operating in different sub- value chain as well as those operating different roles in the food chain.Looking at opportunity exploitation, the finding discloses exploitation strategies in diverse stances of business activities, organisation structures, sources of knowledge, and other relationship with stakeholders. Dissimilarities in their size, sub-value chain, and roles in the value chains also affect choice of exploitation approach.Entrepreneurs may benefit from the findings of this research. They can understand how entrepreneurs with different characteristics behave in order to identify and exploit opportunity. These insights may be especially important for entrepreneurs who wish to increase profits by introducing higher value-added activities within their businesses.This study aims at helping policy makers to understand the varied nature of opportunity identification and exploitation among entrepreneurs. Policy formation mostly focuses on firm size as a unit of analysis, largely ignoring the fact that the entrepreneurs may possess multiple businesses or that they operate at different levels within a value chain. These factors influence how entrepreneurs identify and exploit opportunity. Consequently, policy makers should pay more attention to both the entrepreneur’s individual and firm-level characteristics in order to design and implement more suitable supporting policies

Rethinking the test collection methodology for personal self-tracking data

While vast volumes of personal data are being gathered daily by individuals, the MMM community has not really been tackling the challenge of developing novel retrieval algorithms for this data, due to the challenges of getting access to the data in the first place. While initial efforts have taken place on a small scale, it is our conjecture that a new evaluation paradigm is required in order to make progress in analysing, modeling and retrieving from personal data archives. In this position paper, we propose a new model of Evaluation-as-a-Service that re-imagines the test collection methodology for personal multimedia data in order to address the many challenges of releasing test collections of personal multimedia data

Simulation, testing and validation of digital displacement hydraulic power take-off for wave energy converters

Whilst the available global wave power resource is significant at over 2 TW, there has been very little exploitation of it to date for the generation of electricity. This is due in part to the challenge of converting energy from a low speed, high force, variable source to synchronous, grid-quality electricity. The power take-off (PTO) is the subsystem of the wave energy converter (WEC) which carries out this conversion from mechanical to electrical energy. There are many competing requirements for the design of PTOs, but amongst them are efficiency, load-handling capability, controllability and scalability. The very high ratio of peak-to-mean powers involved means that the system must be able to respond efficiently across a broad load range. Hydraulic systems are a good choice for PTO design as they have very high power densities and are naturally suited to high-force applications. The Quantor is a novel hydraulic WEC PTO concept which combines the quantised PTO of the ‘Pelamis’ WEC with Digital Displacement (DD) hydraulic pump-motors developed by Artemis Intelligent Power Ltd (AIP). The Quantor should be an efficient PTO that is fully controllable in all four quadrants and is offers power conversion improvements to a broad range of WEC designs. This project aims to demonstrate the technical feasibility and quantify the performance of the Quantor, using a WEC emulator to test it in representative conditions. First, modelling is carried out of the WEC emulator for design purposes, followed by detailed physical modelling of the envisaged Quantor PTO system. This means the design of the hydraulic circuit can be refined, the control system can be developed and initial efficiency estimates obtained. After verifying the Quantor in simulation, the WEC hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) emulator and laboratory-scale Quantor system are constructed and commissioned. The WEC emulator system is shown to be a successful test facility for the Quantor PTO. Extensive testing is carried out in both regular and irregular wave conditions and a range of control modes to quantify the performance of the Quantor PTO. The measured input shaft to generator shaft efficiency exceeds 70% in many cases above a minimum absorbed power threshold. Using the data from testing, efficiency results and a detailed loss breakdown for the Quantor in different operating conditions are produced. The physical model is then validated from this data, in terms of its efficiency and losses. The validated physical model replicates the applied PTO torque and overall efficiency of the Quantor within 5% of the experimental results across the tested power range (approximately 2 to 40 kW of input mechanical power). After this, a simplified model is produced which replicates the tested PTO torque, efficiency and losses, but can be used to estimate the Quantor performance in various full-scale WEC architectures. This means that reliable PTO performance predictions based on experimental data can be produced for systems other than the laboratory-scale Quantor. The existence of this Quantor PTO with; the ability to efficiently operate in all four quadrants as demanded by a controller; the availability of a detailed loss breakdown; and the capability to model future system architectures, may provide future opportunities for wave energy developers to design and install commercially successful WECs

Impact Analysis of Smart City Networks in Cities’ Local Government

Since its establishment in 2012, the Spanish Network of Smart Cities (RECI) has worked towards the ultimate objective of making Spanish cities an international reference within the global ‘smart’ panorama. This network, originally empowered by the individual experience of many Spanish cities with presence in international smart city projects for over 10 years, has adopted a form of governance based on complex networks, including its own particular network coordination and management mechanisms. From this point of view, in first place this work tries to answer the question ‘can these coordination mechanisms contribute to the success of the governance network?’ To provide an answer network performance in the framework of cities is studied focusing on the existing network coordination mechanisms and the abilities of the network manager. From its original 25 funding members, RECI has progressively increased its number of members to 65 by the beginning of 2016. On the management and coordination side, RECI is formed by a president, three vice-presidents, one secretary, and one representative from each founding member. From the work point of view, RECI’S ecosystem is divided into five working groups addressing local concerns. This structure has favoured a sharing environment where all cities can learn from others’ experiences and adopt the best practices that better adapt to their local needs and strategic plans. The sharing-based environment is empowered by a Content Management System (CMS) which acts as a common document repository. Overall, this environment can be considered a fast track to learning in matters of smart cities governance and projects implementation. Ultimately, as a consequence of this environment, an important positive impact is produced in the smart governance of these cities. The final objective of this work focuses on providing a full picture of the overall impact of RECI on the Spanish smart cities based on a Political, Economic, Social and Technological (PEST) analysis. Apart from the information gathered in related literature, this analysis is supported by the answers provided by a sample group of RECI’s members to a consultation where a series of questions in relation to their opinion about RECI’s impact on their local governments were made. Lastly, the conclusions of the study show the important role that RECI has played in the recent development of Spain as an international reference in the field of smart cities, both at a network level, with RECI’s mentoring activities to other networks; and individually for Spanish cities

Digital audio watermarking for broadcast monitoring and content identification

Copyright legislation was prompted exactly 300 years ago by a desire to protect authors against exploitation of their work by others. With regard to modern content owners, Digital Rights Management (DRM) issues have become very important since the advent of the Internet. Piracy, or illegal copying, costs content owners billions of dollars every year. DRM is just one tool that can assist content owners in exercising their rights. Two categories of DRM technologies have evolved in digital signal processing recently, namely digital fingerprinting and digital watermarking. One area of Copyright that is consistently overlooked in DRM developments is 'Public Performance'. The research described in this thesis analysed the administration of public performance rights within the music industry in general, with specific focus on the collective rights and broadcasting sectors in Ireland. Limitations in the administration of artists' rights were identified. The impact of these limitations on the careers of developing artists was evaluated. A digital audio watermarking scheme is proposed that would meet the requirements of both the broadcast and collective rights sectors. The goal of the scheme is to embed a standard identifier within an audio signal via modification of its spectral properties in such a way that it would be robust and perceptually transparent. Modification of the audio signal spectrum was attempted in a variety of ways. A method based on a super-resolution frequency identification technique was found to be most effective. The watermarking scheme was evaluated for robustness and found to be extremely effective in recovering embedded watermarks in music signals using a semi-blind decoding process. The final digital audio watermarking algorithm proposed facilitates the development of other applications in the domain of broadcast monitoring for the purposes of equitable royalty distribution along with additional applications and extension to other domains

Measuring and Disrupting Malware Distribution Networks: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Malware Delivery Networks (MDNs) are networks of webpages, servers, computers, and computer files that are used by cybercriminals to proliferate malicious software (or malware) onto victim machines. The business of malware delivery is a complex and multifaceted one that has become increasingly profitable over the last few years. Due to the ongoing arms race between cybercriminals and the security community, cybercriminals are constantly evolving and streamlining their techniques to beat security countermeasures and avoid disruption to their operations, such as by security researchers infiltrating their botnet operations, or law enforcement taking down their infrastructures and arresting those involved. So far, the research community has conducted insightful but isolated studies into the different facets of malicious file distribution. Hence, only a limited picture of the malicious file delivery ecosystem has been provided thus far, leaving many questions unanswered. Using a data-driven and interdisciplinary approach, the purpose of this research is twofold. One, to study and measure the malicious file delivery ecosystem, bringing prior research into context, and to understand precisely how these malware operations respond to security and law enforcement intervention. And two, taking into account the overlapping research efforts of the information security and crime science communities towards preventing cybercrime, this research aims to identify mitigation strategies and intervention points to disrupt this criminal economy more effectively

Strategic sustainability and industrial ecology in an island context, with considerations for a green economy roadmap: a study in the tourist accommodation sector, Grenada.

The purpose of this research is to show how business and enterprise can align sustainability and sustainable development to create strategic sustainability (SS) procedures, which can be used for planning towards sustainability in an island context. Even with the 3Ps depiction of sustainable development (SD), the idea continues to be difficult to make operational (Azar, Holmberg and Lindgren 1996) and has failed in many of its applications (Baumgartner and Korhonen 2010). Moreover, businesses wishing to operate in perpetuity are challenged by the socio-ecological system that constitutes sustainability. But all businesses have materials, energy and waste flows, (MEWFs) and a more strategic approach to managing these flows can assist businesses with the sustainability challenge. Firstly however, sustainability described as a successful socio-ecological system must be understood. Secondly the process of reducing the MEWFs within the business, referred to as sustainable development actions must be seen as separate but congruent to sustainability. By adapting the framework for strategic sustainable development and using a mixed methods approach, the necessary strategy content for the SS procedures are researched in the tourist accommodation sector-Grenada. It is shown that in an island context, defined as an isolated system with scarce resources, (Deschenes and Chertow 2004) the challenges of sustainability, especially for businesses such as the tourist accommodation sector, are exacerbated. The research concludes with three important groups of steps for the SS procedures: 1) visioning and vision linking; 2) developing sector strategic actions and 3) monitoring and evaluation. A tourism symbiosis was proposed as a critical action for reducing MEWFs. Considerations for implementing aspects of a proposed green economy roadmap using the SS procedures are addressed. The research can assist both policy makers and business leaders to operationalise sustainable development and to do so with some degree of certainty of achieving sustainability in an island context