Developing a new business model for enabling research - the case of the ACPFG in Australia

Publisher's postprint archived as permitted by publisher.The way in which companies, research centres and educational institutions are organised and structured may provide a competitive advantage for commercialisation, in particular if companies are dependent on the deployment of complementary assets and capabilities by third parties. This paper presents the case of the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG), a private agricultural biotechnology (agbiotech) company specialising in early stage Research and Development (R&D) to produce superior adapted cereal varieties, tolerant to abiotic stress conditions such as drought, frost, salt, or mineral toxicity, all of which have a direct and negative impact on plant growth and crop productivity. The organisational structure of the company has been influenced and shaped by Government policy, shareholders expectations and trends in the agbiotech industrial organisation. It has proved attractive to potential alliance partners for collaborative R&D and commercialisation. We present the ACPFG as a new business model to fund basic research and facilitate technology transfer.Stephanie C. Agius, David Corkindale, Antonio G. Dottore, Michael Gilber

A structural Time Series Model with Markov Switching.

We propose an innovations form of the structural model underlying exponential smoothing that is further augmented by a latent Markov switching process. A particular case of the new model is the local level model with a switching drift, where the switching component describes the change between high and low growth rate periods. This new model is used to analyse the US business cycle using US Quarterly real GNP data. Model parameters are estimated using a Gibbs sampling algorithm and subsequently used for forecasting purposes. In addition, the stability of the new model is tested against Hamilton's model over a range of observation periods.Structural models, Markov switching regime, Gibbs sampling Business cycle.

Validating adequacy and suitability of business-IT alignment criteria in an inter-enterprise maturity model

Aligning requirements of a business with its information technology is currently a major issue in enterprise computing. Existing literature indicates important criteria to judge the level of alignment between business and IT within a single enterprise. However, identifying such criteria in an inter-enterprise setting – or re-thinking the existing ones – is hardly addressed at all. Business-IT alignment in such settings poses new challenges, as in inter-enterprise collaborations, alignment is driven by economic processes instead of centralized decision-making processes. In our research, we develop a maturity model for business-IT alignment in inter-enterprise settings that takes this difference into account. In this paper, we report on a multi-method approach we devised to confront the validation of the business-IT alignment criteria that we included in the maturity model. As independent feedback is critical for our validation, we used a focus group session and a case study as instruments to take the first step in validating the business-IT alignment criteria. We present how we applied our approach, what we learnt, and what the implications were for our model

Carving out new business models in a small company through contextual ambidexterity: the case of a sustainable company

Business model innovation (BMI) and organizational ambidexterity have been pointed out as mechanisms for companies achieving sustainability. However, especially considering small and medium enterprises (SMEs), there is a lack of studies demonstrating how to combine these mechanisms. Tackling such a gap, this study seeks to understand how SMEs can ambidextrously manage BMI. Our aim is to provide a practical artifact, accessible to SMEs, to operationalize BMI through organizational ambidexterity. To this end, we conducted our study under the design science research to, first, build an artifact for operationalizing contextual ambidexterity for business model innovation. Then, we used an in-depth case study with a vegan fashion small e-commerce to evaluate the practical outcomes of the artifact. Our findings show that the company improves its business model while, at the same time, designs a new business model and monetizes it. Thus, our approach was able to take the first steps in the direction of operationalizing contextual ambidexterity for business model innovation in small and medium enterprises, democratizing the concept. We contribute to theory by connecting different literature strands and to practice by creating an artifact to assist managemen

Business integration models in the context of web services.

E-commerce development and applications have been bringing the Internet to business and marketing and reforming our current business styles and processes. The rapid development of the Web, in particular, the introduction of the semantic web and web service technologies, enables business processes, modeling and management to enter an entirely new stage. Traditional web based business data and transactions can now be analyzed, extracted and modeled to discover new business rules and to form new business strategies, let alone mining the business data in order to classify customers or products. In this paper, we investigate and analyze the business integration models in the context of web services using a micro-payment system because a micro-payment system is considered to be a service intensive activity, where many payment tasks involve different forms of services, such as payment method selection for buyers, security support software, product price comparison, etc. We will use the micro-payment case to discuss and illustrate how the web services approaches support and transform the business process and integration model.

Ethical theory and business ethics: the search for a new model

The following thesis is an attempt to propose a 'model' to begin an analysis on a specific dilemma within business ethics. The model will utilise both 'metaphorical' and 'literal' language in the form of questions based on modem moral philosophical theory. The motivation in providing these questions is that there will be less ambiguity if a 'tool' was used to analyse the dilemma, rather than use intuition or abstract moral philosophy. The model, called the Comb, will be used to analyze a comprehensive case study - the case of the Newfoundland Fishing Industry. The case is in the form of an illustrative dilemma and examines the restructuring of the Newfoundland fishing industry. Newfoundland is one of the island provinces of Canada and its main industry, the offshore and inshore fisheries, has recently been 'decimated' by a number of factors. The case will hopefully demonstrate that the restructuring of the Newfoundland fishing industry may be portrayed as an ethical dilemma in business. The analysis will hopefully 'sort' and 'arrange' some of the ethical issues emanating out of the restructuring. The thesis is also an attempt to develop an argument for approaching business ethics from a reflective standpoint. The end result is designed to make the user of the questions developed through the Comb think reflectively, to open new lines of debate within the subject area of business ethics as well as the case of the restructuring of the Newfoundland fishery. The questions of the Comb provide the framework which may be seen as absent in a business ethics analysis. It would seem that the answers about why business is ‘unethical’ are quite easy to produce - the capitalist system, the emphasis on short-termism, managerial incompetence and so on - but are they the answers to the right questions? The Comb specifically and this thesis as a whole are attempts to develop a practical, reflective method to a examine specific dilemma in business ethics. It may be seen as an attempt to develop 'detachedness’ within the 'involvement' of a case study. The thesis is a personal search. Not a search to find answers but one which will propose questions to expand the author’s understanding of the dilemma of the restructuring of the Newfoundland Fishery. It is a search to attempt to understand the subject area of business ethics and how to operationalise the theory behind it. Moreover, it is a search to see if a systematic and simplified model is possible within the subject area of business ethics. The thesis will conclude that while the model may be seen as valid for improving the author’s understanding of the subject area of business ethics and the case study of the Newfoundland fishery, improvements may be made through, for example, establishing alternative 'metaphors’. It will also argue that the 'context' of a business ethics analysis is very important. Business ethics and the model may have to understood as the right ‘tool' for the times

A simulation-based approach to business model design and organizational Change

While several practice-based approaches of business model design suggest ways to create new business models, there is limited understanding of why and how business models change. This exploratory study employs neural network analysis to simulate business model design and business model change. We conceptualise business model design as a schema of the organisation’s critical resources, transactions, and value proposition. Elements of the schema are connected in a simple neural network. The network evolves based on a constraint satisfaction network until it converges to a stable state of a coherent business model. An in-depth case study of an entrepreneurial venture provides a real-world example to test the analytical framework. Using data from the case study, we run multiple simulations of business model design and business model change. The results suggest that business model change can be understood as a form of constraint satisfaction, linking managerial cognition with business model change. The simulation approach also helps identify possible, but unrealized business models. This novel approach paves the way for new research and practice in business model design and change

Creating New Leaders of Color for the Social Sector

This case study profiles the Annie E. Casey Foundation's support of efforts to create a broader pipeline of up-and-coming leaders of color for the social sector, in cooperation with Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT) and New York University's Wagner School of Public Service and Stern School of Business. The document explores how MLT expanded its successful corporate leadership development model and combined it with the graduate schools' joint MBA/MPA dual-degree program to create new opportunities for leaders of color

An Architecture for Information Commerce Systems

The increasing use of the Internet in business and commerce has created a number of new business opportunities and the need for supporting models and platforms. One of these opportunities is information commerce (i-commerce), a special case of ecommerce focused on the purchase and sale of information as a commodity. In this paper we present an architecture for i-commerce systems using OPELIX (Open Personalized Electronic Information Commerce System) [11] as an example. OPELIX provides an open information commerce platform that enables enterprises to produce, sell, deliver, and manage information products and related services over the Internet. We focus on the notion of information marketplace, a virtual location that enables i-commerce, describe the business and domain model for an information marketplace, and discuss the role of intermediaries in this environment. The domain model is used as the basis for the software architecture of the OPELIX system. We discuss the characteristics of the OPELIX architecture and compare our approach to related work in the field