Ownership identity, strategy and performance:business group affiliates versus independent firms in India

We consider whether the impact of entrepreneurial orientation on business performance is moderated by the company affiliation with business groups. Within business groups, we explore the trade-off between inter-firm insurance that enables risk-taking, and inefficient resource allocation. Risk-taking in group affiliated firms leads to higher performance, compared to independent firms, but the impact of proactivity is attenuated. Utilizing Indian data, we show that risk-taking may undermine rather than improve business performance, but this effect is not present in business groups. Proactivity enhances performance, but less so in business groups. Firms can also enhance performance by technological knowledge acquisition, but these effects are not significantly different for various ownership categories

Towards Smarter Fluorescence Microscopy: Enabling Adaptive Acquisition Strategies With Optimized Photon Budget

Fluorescence microscopy is an invaluable technique for studying the intricate process of organism development. The acquisition process, however, is associated with the fundamental trade-off between the quality and reliability of the acquired data. On one hand, the goal of capturing the development in its entirety, often times across multiple spatial and temporal scales, requires extended acquisition periods. On the other hand, high doses of light required for such experiments are harmful for living samples and can introduce non-physiological artifacts in the normal course of development. Conventionally, a single set of acquisition parameters is chosen in the beginning of the acquisition and constitutes the experimenter’s best guess of the overall optimal configuration within the aforementioned trade-off. In the paradigm of adaptive microscopy, in turn, one aims at achieving more efficient photon budget distribution by dynamically adjusting the acquisition parameters to the changing properties of the sample. In this thesis, I explore the principles of adaptive microscopy and propose a range of improvements for two real imaging scenarios. Chapter 2 summarizes the design and implementation of an adaptive pipeline for efficient observation of the asymmetrically dividing neurogenic progenitors in Zebrafish retina. In the described approach the fast and expensive acquisition mode is automatically activated only when the mitotic cells are present in the field of view. The method illustrates the benefits of the adaptive acquisition in the common scenario of the individual events of interest being sparsely distributed throughout the duration of the acquisition. Chapter 3 focuses on computational aspects of segmentation-based adaptive schemes for efficient acquisition of the developing Drosophila pupal wing. Fast sample segmentation is shown to provide a valuable output for the accurate evaluation of the sample morphology and dynamics in real time. This knowledge proves instrumental for adjusting the acquisition parameters to the current properties of the sample and reducing the required photon budget with minimal effects to the quality of the acquired data. Chapter 4 addresses the generation of synthetic training data for learning-based methods in bioimage analysis, making them more practical and accessible for smart microscopy pipelines. State-of-the-art deep learning models trained exclusively on the generated synthetic data are shown to yield powerful predictions when applied to the real microscopy images. In the end, in-depth evaluation of the segmentation quality of both real and synthetic data-based models illustrates the important practical aspects of the approach and outlines the directions for further research

Managing the KM Trade-Off: Knowledge Centralization versus Distribution

KM is more an archipelago of theories and practices rather than a monolithic approach. We propose a conceptual map that organizes some major approaches to KM according to their assumptions on the nature of knowledge. The paper introduces the two major views on knowledge ­objectivist, subjectivist - and explodes each of them into two major approaches to KM: knowledge as a market, and knowledge as intellectual capital (the objectivistic perspective); knowledge as mental models, and knowledge as practice (the subjectivist perspective). We argue that the dichotomy between objective and subjective approaches is intrinsic to KM within complex organizations, as each side of the dichotomy responds to different, and often conflicting, needs: on the one hand, the need to maximize the value of knowledge through its replication; on the other hand, the need to keep knowledge appropriate to an increasingly complex and changing environment. Moreover, as a proposal for a deeper discussion, such trade-off will be suggested as the origin of other relevant KM related trade-offs that will be listed. Managing these trade-offs will be proposed as a main challenge of KM

Dynamic Control of Explore/Exploit Trade-Off In Bayesian Optimization

Bayesian optimization offers the possibility of optimizing black-box operations not accessible through traditional techniques. The success of Bayesian optimization methods such as Expected Improvement (EI) are significantly affected by the degree of trade-off between exploration and exploitation. Too much exploration can lead to inefficient optimization protocols, whilst too much exploitation leaves the protocol open to strong initial biases, and a high chance of getting stuck in a local minimum. Typically, a constant margin is used to control this trade-off, which results in yet another hyper-parameter to be optimized. We propose contextual improvement as a simple, yet effective heuristic to counter this - achieving a one-shot optimization strategy. Our proposed heuristic can be swiftly calculated and improves both the speed and robustness of discovery of optimal solutions. We demonstrate its effectiveness on both synthetic and real world problems and explore the unaccounted for uncertainty in the pre-determination of search hyperparameters controlling explore-exploit trade-off.Comment: Accepted for publication in the proceedings of 2018 Computing Conferenc

The Knowledge Application and Utilization Framework Applied to Defense COTS: A Research Synthesis for Outsourced Innovation

Purpose -- Militaries of developing nations face increasing budget pressures, high operations tempo, a blitzing pace of technology, and adversaries that often meet or beat government capabilities using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies. The adoption of COTS products into defense acquisitions has been offered to help meet these challenges by essentially outsourcing new product development and innovation. This research summarizes extant research to develop a framework for managing the innovative and knowledge flows. Design/Methodology/Approach – A literature review of 62 sources was conducted with the objectives of identifying antecedents (barriers and facilitators) and consequences of COTS adoption. Findings – The DoD COTS literature predominantly consists of industry case studies, and there’s a strong need for further academically rigorous study. Extant rigorous research implicates the importance of the role of knowledge management to government innovative thinking that relies heavily on commercial suppliers. Research Limitations/Implications – Extant academically rigorous studies tend to depend on measures derived from work in information systems research, relying on user satisfaction as the outcome. Our findings indicate that user satisfaction has no relationship to COTS success; technically complex governmental purchases may be too distant from users or may have socio-economic goals that supersede user satisfaction. The knowledge acquisition and utilization framework worked well to explain the innovative process in COTS. Practical Implications – Where past research in the commercial context found technological knowledge to outweigh market knowledge in terms of importance, our research found the opposite. Managers either in government or marketing to government should be aware of the importance of market knowledge for defense COTS innovation, especially for commercial companies that work as system integrators. Originality/Value – From the literature emerged a framework of COTS product usage and a scale to measure COTS product appropriateness that should help to guide COTS product adoption decisions and to help manage COTS product implementations ex post